


In The Beginning, There Was You

by BreakTheDawn



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020), Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Cloud Strife, BAMF Prompto Argentum, Cloud Strife Needs a Hug, Cloud and Prompto are brothers, Dropping Prompto into the FFVII Canon and Going With It, F/M, Former Turk Prompto, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Prompto Argentum Needs a Hug, Prompto Argentum is a Ray of Sunshine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:01:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23763517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BreakTheDawn/pseuds/BreakTheDawn
Summary: “Is that…” a heavy swallow, “is that really you, Cloud?”Aware of Tifa and all of Avalanche’s eyes locked onto him, Cloud takes a deep breath and slowly turns on the bar stool to look at the new arrival.Hair the exact same shade of blonde as his own, even falling about in a comparable spiky pattern in the front. A face that looks like Cloud himself in the mirror a few years ago. The eyes are new, more violet in color than the last time Cloud remembers seeing them (and Gods, it’s really been years).“Prompto,” the ex-Soldier breathes.His little brother continues to stare at him in disbelief, before Prompto’s face screws up and a quiet noise escapes him.“Aw man,” Prompto’s voice wobbles as he goes to cover his face with a hand.Cloud’s up and across the room before he even thinks about it.Or,Let's just quietly slide Prompto Argentum into the FFVII storyline and see what happens.
Relationships: Cloud Strife & Barret Wallace, Prompto Argentum & Cloud Strife, Prompto Argentum & Reno, Tifa Lockhart & Cloud Strife
Comments: 89
Kudos: 547





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've been playing the FFVII Remake and it's actually pretty glorious. I'm not that far in at the time of this posting, but I've most definitely been reminded of how much I adore the characters of VII and how much I've always wanted to write for this fandom.
> 
> I don't what happened, I was looking at Cloud in HD, realized that with freckles he's look almost exactly like Prompto from XV, and then I spiraled. This is the result. 
> 
> This is definitely an impulse post, but I really feel like I've got somewhere to go with idea, so please enjoy this humble intro to it. 
> 
> As always, I own nothing and please mind the tags!

"So…"

Wedge sounds hesitant, which is how Cloud can instantly tell that he's going to be the target for the man's next question.

"Cloud," sure enough, Wedge is looking right at him when Cloud peers out of the corner of his eye. "Are you…?"

The man pauses, and Cloud takes the second to turn and face him fully. Jesse is still in the process of arming the bomb. He may as well entertain the guy's curiosity while it's convenient for all of them.

"Am I….?" He asks expectantly, arching an eyebrow. 

There's another tremor that shakes the foundation of the tunnel that they're in. Biggs swears under his breath, and Cloud finds himself morbidly impressed by just how destructive Jesse made that bomb. 

"Are you like," Wedge continues after the dust settles, "really Prompto's brother?"

His voice is small, but it catches the attention of everyone easily enough. Jessie pauses in her work, Biggs elbows Wedge, and even Barret tilts his head to observe Cloud quietly. 

Cloud finds himself a bit taken aback. 

Not of the question, or the fact that Wedge feels the need to ask. Prompto has always excelled with relating and talking to other people in a way that Cloud couldn't even begin to emulate. It's no surprise that these people doubt that they're related. Hell, if he and Prompto didn't look so damn similar, then Cloud himself might have doubted their relation at one point in time. So Wedge's question doesn't catch him off guard though.

What  _ does  _ catch him off guard though, is how breathless the words make him feel. 

It's one thing to know that these people have met and interacted with his little brother, that Prompto and Tifa's word was a big factor in Barret hiring him. It's a whole different story to have someone acknowledge it though. 

Cloud's no fool. He knows that they've been watching him this entire mission, examining him. Feeling him out as a mercenary and as an ex-SOLDIER. He also knows that they've been questioning him as the type of person to be childhood friends with Tifa. It only makes sense that they'd be comparing him to Prompto as well.

There's an odd ache though, when he acknowledges that. The fact that these people know Prompto, know him well enough to have a baseline to compare Cloud to, bothers him in a way that he's not prepared for. 

Because that means that they've been around Prompto. They've seen him, spoken to him, probably laughed at his dorky jokes and smiled at his almost aggressively friendly nature. They've seen him smile, heard his voice, heard his laugh. 

It hurts, to acknowledge that they've had that, when all Cloud has had is memories and a solemn worry that's become so common that it's basically integrated itself into his very being.

_ You'll see him soon _ , Cloud reminds himself.  _ The whole reason you even took this job was because you knew that you'd be able to see him again _ .

"Yeah," is all Cloud says, registering the tension in the air rising the longer he stays silent. "Shocks everyone," he shrugs, "I know. But we're really brothers."

He keeps his face studiously blank, his tone uninterested. These AVALANCHE guys are buffoons, sure. But they're still a decently effective group of eco-terrorists. Cloud doesn't think that any of them are malignant at heart, but there's still no way that he's going to clue them in to the fact that even the mere mention of Prompto gets to him.

"Guess I shouldn't be surprised," Biggs breaks the silence as Jessie goes back to fiddling with her bomb, "if you had freckles, I'd go as far as to say that you guys are twins."

“We get that a lot,” is all Cloud says in response. “Your bomb ready?” he asks immediately after, eager to end this conversation as soon as possible. Thinking about Prompto and not being able to see him makes Cloud feel things that he would rather not deal with at the moment.

“Just about,” Jessie murmurs. Another minute passes before she makes a triumphant noise and stands. “Ok, stand back!”

This bomb actually works a bit like how Cloud expected the one they set in the Reactor to work. The explosion is powerful, but controlled. Nothing at all like the cataclysm that they’d set off not ten minutes ago. 

The difference is made even more apparent when the group separates and Cloud sees the full scale of destruction that the bombing has caused. 

The damage is unprecedented, Cloud figures. The entire sector has been thrown into a frenzy, and the infrastructure has suffered from disastrous failures that have the public in both panic and despair. He somehow doubts that Jessie has it in her to purposefully cause such destruction, no matter how much she hates Shinra. He could potentially see Barret seeing such massive collateral damage as worth it, but his band of followers are all too soft for it, Cloud thinks. 

The ex-SOLDIER questions exactly what he’s gotten himself into as he tries to navigate the debris and burning buildings. There’s an uncomfortable feeling in his throat as he hears the loud cries of children and the soft weeps of the elderly as he follows a path to the station. 

“Prompto,” Clouds finds himself saying quietly, walking past a distraught family composed of two crying kids and a frazzled mother. “You’re going to see Prompto.” 

It does nothing to abate the discomfort Cloud feels, but it is enough to keep his feet moving and his arms steady as he cuts a path through some stubborn Shinra troopers to move forward.

(His own mind attacking him in the form of Sephiroth shakes that foundation a bit, but then he meets the flower girl and then sees the hooded wraiths and then there’s more troopers and then there’s nothing more for Cloud to do than to keep going.)

(He keeps the flower from the flower girl and does his best to keep intact because the color reminds him of the darker tones in Prompto’s hair. Though it’s been years since he’s seen Prompto, Cloud can remember seeing him off on his next assignment more clearly than almost anything else he remembers after.)

(At one point it was him in one of those trooper uniforms, so Cloud does his best to take them out non-lethally, but it doesn’t always work out.)

(At one point it was also Prompto.

It’s easier to think of creative ways to knock them out after Cloud reminds himself of that.)

…

The next inquisition comes from Jessie, unsurprisingly.

The woman’s been the least shy about making attempts to try and get to know Cloud better. And despite the fact that he has no intention of trying to get to know these people better, he’s not blind to the fact that she seems to be the most tolerable one of the bunch. Cloud could see himself being friends with someone like her, maybe. But the ex-SOLDIER knows that at least some part of her friendly nature has to be feigned. He doesn’t doubt her sincerity when she says that she just wants to get to know him better, but Cloud is almost positive that there’s something else there beneath all of it. And he’s not interested in trying to find out what it is.

“Anyways,” so when the woman begins speaking in a tone that’s far too casual, just after she’s shown him the virtual map on the train, Cloud immediately becomes wary.

“Are you and Prompto close?” she asks. It’s different from the way that she had asked about Tifa earlier. When asking about Tifa, Jessie seemed to kind of hold her breath in anticipation for the answer. Now, she’s looking at him patiently even though her eyes are curious. 

“Why?” he asks bluntly, aware of the fact that Barret is once again shamelessly listening in.

“Just curious,” Jessie shrugs, “you have to admit that it’s interesting. Prompto just started helping us out not a couple months ago. Never talked about his brother, even though Tifa told us he had one. And now you’ve coincidentally reconnected with Tifa not that long ago so you’re here now too.”

Cloud doesn’t answer.

“Add that to the fact that you’re both former Shinra,” Jessie continues, “and not just any former Shinra. An ex-Turk and an ex-SOLDIER. You guys apparently haven’t seen each other in years.”

“Five,” the words come out without his permission, “it’s been five years.”

“You  _ see _ !” Jessie gestures to him with her eyes wide, “this is all like the plot of some stage play! Brothers reunited after five years of having no contact with one another! It’s all so surreal.

Cloud doesn’t disagree. Still, he asks, “So what’s your point?”

“I know that there has to be some complicated circumstances here, considering you both only came back to Midgar within the past few months,” the woman explains, “but are you guys close? Like, is this type of distance normal? Were you looking for him?”

He was, in fact. 

Cloud had arrived in Midgar, not entirely remembering the trip there but knowing that he had to cut his way through Shinra to get there. He wasn’t even sure why he’d bothered coming back, but he knew that the Slums were a good place to both disappear for some time and make some money. Last he’d heard, his little brother was still on assignment in Wutai. His plan had been to build up some savings as well as to quietly monitor Shinra’s activities (and maybe try to slip in and gather more information on his brother’s post), and then he was going to go for his brother because Shinra couldn’t be trusted and Nibelheim was gone and he just needed to find Prompto and keep him safe. 

The shock he’d felt when he’d been found by Tifa at the Sector 7 station and she’d told him that Prompto was here had been immeasurable. As was the hope and relief that followed (after he'd had an admittedly embarrassing freak out right there and then). Apparently something had happened to his brother as well that made him awaken to the true nature of Shinra. Something bad enough that Prompto had deserted the Turks and made his way back to Midgar, likely in search of Cloud. According to Tifa, Prompto hadn’t been clear on what made him leave, but he’d proven himself by providing AVALANCHE with vital support for a few of their missions. The promise from Tifa to tell Prompto that Cloud was here was essentially what made Cloud agree to take this job.

But Jessie doesn’t need to know this.

“Used to be close,” Cloud says with a shrug of his own, “lost contact, but it’s not uncommon for us to not see each other. Different departments and all.”

There’s a moment where the only sound is of the train moving along the tracks and the scattered conversation about the cabin.

“That’s it?” Jessie questions, “that’s...all you have to say?”

“Answered your questions, didn’t I?” Cloud shrugs carelessly, “What more is there to say?”

“You’re really this nonchalant about your kid brother that you haven’t seen in five years?” the woman asks dubiously, “Your kid brother who was a Turk?”

_ No, I’m not _ . Cloud thinks.  _ But you don’t need to know that _ .

“No other way to be,” is what he says, “gonna see him again soon anyway.”

“ _ Seriously _ ?”

“Seriously.” Cloud says firmly, and turns away from the conversation.

Jessie is gaping at him and Barret’s muttering very unflattering things underneath his breath, but Cloud ignores them as he goes to stand against the wall at the other end of the cabin.

Their opinion of him doesn’t matter, but he’ll be damned if he gives them the impression that Prompto is a weak spot of his. There’s no way in  _ hell  _ that he’ll give them fuel to potentially use his brother as leverage before he confirms that Prompto is safe with his own eyes.

No one is going to jeopardize that, Cloud decides. 

No one.

…

In an unexpected turn of events, it’s actually Barret who brings it up next.. Even more unexpectedly, he’s the one who actually makes Cloud feel a bit better about it.

“Yo, spiky.”

Cloud sighs around the rim of his glass. The drink that Tifa prepared before flitting off to do other things is definitely not strong enough for this. Nevertheless, he turns his head to look at the larger man. 

Barret is examining him leisurely, and Cloud realizes that there was tension that Barret must have been holding in his shoulders all night that’s gone now, as the man looks infinitely more relaxed.

“He’s good,” is what the man leads with. Cloud arches an eyebrow. There’s no way that Barret is not talking about Prompto. But just because that much is clear, doesn’t mean that Barret’s motivations are. 

So all he gives in response is a quiet, “Oh?”

“Your kid brother,” Barret goes on, as though the only thing he needed was for Cloud to acknowledge that he was listening. “He’s good, smart. Couldn’t have pulled tonight off without him.”

_ Don’t know how proud that will make him feel _ , Cloud thinks. Prompto has never been violent, nor destructive, nor vindictive. One of the things that sticks out most in Cloud’s head about his younger brother is his gentleness, something that Cloud had been worried that the Turks would take advantage of. 

There’s no way that Prompto would have wanted things to play out like they did tonight. That level of collateral damage would have been unacceptable to his little brother, Cloud is absolutely sure of it. 

(He studiously ignores the ache in his chest and the voice in the back of his head telling him that it’s been five years, so really, who is  _ he  _ to speak on what Prompto is capable of?)

Following that line of thought, there’s no doubt in his mind that either something else was at play in that Reactor, or that Jessie definitely constructed that bomb incorrectly. Because she’d claimed that Prompto had been the one to teach her how to construct a bomb powerful enough to disrupt the functions of the Reactor, but controlled enough to not cause any damage to the surrounding sector. 

He’d been kind when he said that there was some weight to Jessie’s thought about a mako reaction being the cause of the excessive damage, but Cloud knows better. Because if  _ Prompto  _ is really the one who came up with the design, then he’d have definitely accounted for a potential mako reaction. Because Cloud’s younger brother is smart, like Barret said. One of the most technically inclined and analytical minds that Cloud’s ever seen. And he knows that time with the Turks would have fostered that, given Prompto’s mind the opportunity to thrive. 

So, either Jessie screwed up when making the bomb, or something else happened back there. Because the brother that Cloud remembers would never readily make something that would result in that type of havoc.

“You going somewhere with this?” Cloud asks, sipping at his drink. 

“Nah, not really.” Barret admits, and Cloud suddenly wishes that the man didn’t obnoxiously wear his sunglasses constantly so that he had an idea of what was in his eyes. “Just thought I’d say that Prompto’s a good kid.”

Cloud has nothing to say to that.

“He’s a good kid,” Barret repeats, turning around and walking away lazily. “Full of energy, positive,” the man pauses at the doors to the bar, “ _ Healthy _ .”

The word is said with a significance that isn’t lost on Cloud, and the ex-SOLDIER finds himself staring at Barret’s back.

“Figured it might do you some good to hear that,” the older man states, “talk to Tifa about your pay.”

And with that, he’s gone.

Tifa had said as much, and Cloud still isn’t going to quite believe until he can see for himself. 

But hearing another person say it? 

Well, it may just make the ache in his chest ease up just a little bit.

…

When Tifa leads him to the room her landlord is putting him up in, she breaks the cautious pattern she’s kept up with so far regarding the topic. 

One of the first things that Tifa had said after the initial barrage of questions about his time and wellbeing was a simple “Prompto’s back in Midgar too.”

It had resulted in one of the most severe and debilitating migraines that Cloud’s had yet. The blond isn’t sure what he’d been thinking before then, just the mention of his younger brother’s name had unearthed a swarm of memories and feelings and  _ Promptopromptopromptoprompto _ -

Cloud’s embarrassed to admit that he lost his shit, panicking and hyperventilating until an ache set in his chest as Tifa managed to calm him down.

Since then, Tifa had been careful to only offer small snippets of information about his brother at a time. Things like what Prompto was doing (she didn’t know what he did when he wasn’t helping AVALANCHE, but she suspected that he spent most of his time in the Sector 3 and Sector 4 slums), how she’d come across him (he’d stopped by the bar to ask after a man named Johnny for whatever reason and while he didn’t immediately recognize her, Tifa had instantly recognized him), what his plans were (she couldn’t say for sure, but she imagined that he was looking for Cloud actually and helping AVALANCHE stir up trouble worked in his favor for whatever reason), how he was doing (she’d said that he came across as cheerful and sweet, but that there was obviously something weighing heavy on his mind, but she couldn’t be sure of what it was because Prompto adamantly refused to talk about why he left the Turks and seemed to retreat into himself when asked to talk about Cloud as well). These were all things she’d shared when Cloud himself had asked.

So it’s a little surprising when Tifa says, “Prompto should be coming by tomorrow,” without any prompting from Cloud. 

“Yeah?” he stops examining the room he’s been given, turning to face his friend fully.

“Yeah,” she confirms with a smile, “tomorrow evening.”

“I see,” there’s not much that Cloud can say to that. It almost doesn’t feel real, that he’s going to see his brother again. The idea is so novel that Cloud is having trouble processing it.

Tifa knows him though, and knows him well enough to be able to see that Cloud’s overwhelmed.

“It’ll be ok,” she soothes, “I know you’re anxious to see him. And even though he said in his letter that he’s coming around to check in with Barret and the others about how the mission went, we all know that he’s coming to see you.”

“Hmm,” is all Cloud gives in return. 

Cloud had reunited with Tifa during one of the lulls in contact that AVALANCHE had with Prompto. Apparently, Prompto only contacted them once every two weeks if he wasn’t readily around and available in the area. Their meeting again at the station had occurred just after one of those exchanges, so Tifa wasn’t actually able to tell Prompto about Cloud being around until a few days ago. From what she’d heard, Prompto was above plate at the moment and slowly making his way down and around back to Sector 7 because he knew that Barret was planning another bombing just two days after the first one. If what Tifa’s saying now checks out though, Prompto will be arriving a day early.

“He should come around the time the bar is supposed to open,” Tifa goes on, “it’ll leave us most of the day to go around getting you set up as a merc.”

“Right,” Cloud acknowledges. He’d almost forgotten that this was the entire point. The plan was to help AVALANCHE out on this one job (and maybe some more if the pay was right) and then establish himself as a hand-for-hire in the slums. 

“You know,” Tifa says softly, “I’m really happy for you. Both of you.”

Cloud doesn’t know what to say to that, so he merely nods.

“You two were always so close back in Nibelheim,” Tifa muses thoughtfully, “it didn’t surprise me at all when Prompto left after you.”

“Surprised  _ me  _ though,” Cloud says wryly, “it shouldn’t have, in hindsight. Thought I was going to keel over from shock when he popped up in the infantry out of nowhere one day.”

“That’s the Strife brothers for you,” his friend gives a small grin, “always setting out and accomplishing what they want to by sheer force of will.”

Something about the words makes Cloud’s head buzz and ache a bit, so he’s admittedly relieved when Tifa wraps up the pleasantries and takes her leave for the night. The exhaustion of the day slams into him like a freight train the moment he lays down, and Cloud’s out in no time, anxiously awaiting the next day.

_ Tomorrow _ .

_ You’ll see him tomorrow _ .

…

In an odd turn of events, it’s actually Biggs that manages to get something out of Cloud the next day.

People in the slums have such mundane and petty problems, Cloud realizes quickly. Well, when those problems aren’t monsters at least. But between chasing down cats and glorified fetch quests, and with only minimally challenging monsters to take down when he’s not doing that, Cloud finds himself buzzing with a mix of anticipation and irritation by noon. 

Biggs is looking at the new sword that Cloud had purchased from the weapon shop, seemingly engrossed when he breaks the silence randomly.

“Does your brother eat cake?”

All Cloud can think to do is stare.

“...What?” he asks when Biggs doesn’t elaborate. Tifa and Wedge are conversing with one of the locals at the edge of the roof, so there’s no way that Biggs is talking to anyone other than Cloud.

“Does Prompto eat cake?” Biggs repeats the question, voice as calm and words as clear as the first time and still Cloud doesn’t get it.

“Where did  _ that  _ come from?”

"Your bro came around the bar on 25th of October," the other man replies, still not looking up.

"He turned nineteen," Cloud murmurs without thinking.

" _ Nineteen _ ?" Biggs does look up at that, eyes wide. "Holy shit," he breathes, "we knew the kid was young and all but we figured he'd have at least broke twenty!"

"You were explaining something," Cloud says impatiently.

"Oh yeah," Biggs nods, "so Tifa doesn't really tell us all that much about Prompto, but she let it slip that it was his birthday because she was making him a special drink or whatever." 

"Ok?" Cloud's still not sure where this is going.

"So we went and got the kid a cake," Biggs says with a grin, "because everyone should at least be able to eat cake on their birthday."

Cloud feels his own lips tug up slightly at the corners. Because even though it's not fun to acknowledge the fact that he's missed  _ five  _ of his brother's birthdays, he now knows where this is going and it's always been one of Prompto's more amusing habits.

"And I  _ swear  _ that he was so happy!" Biggs insists, gesturing with his hands. "His eyes lit up and everything. Maybe it's some super secret Turk training but I just  _ know  _ that he was excited that we got him a cake."

"But he didn't eat it," Cloud guesses.

"Didn't even try the icing!" Biggs confirms, "We spent so much time talking about what Wutai's mountains are like, none of us even noticed that he didn't eat any cake until after he'd already left!"

"And then he conveniently forgot it," Cloud says wryly, “and insisted that you all eat it so it didn’t go to waste when you told him."

"Exactly that!" Biggs points, "Is it just because he just doesn't like cake? Should we have gotten him a cupcake or cookies or something?"

"Prompto doesn't like sweets," Cloud finds himself saying naturally, "unless it's chocolate."

The old explanation comes easily to him. His brother's never been a picky eater about anything else, but Prompto does  _ not  _ like sweet or sugary things. Hasn't ever since he was a toddler and could put words to his displeasure. The only exception to that rule is chocolate. 

"Chocolate?" Biggs repeats, "so he'd eat a chocolate cake?"

"Or a red velvet cake," Cloud shrugs, "or brownies, fudge, double chocolate chip cookies."

"And he doesn't like  _ any  _ other type of sweet treat?" Biggs arches an eyebrow, "Not one?"

"Nope," the ex-SOLDIER responds blankly, "but he probably didn't wanna seem ungrateful or something like that, so he just didn't say anything."

"Hm," Biggs nods as though he gets it, "I didn't know that Turks took people that nice."

Cloud doesn't answer, but he remembers being confused about the Turks interest in his brother himself. Not that he'd doubted Prompto's capabilities, but the type of person the Turks normally went for most certainly wasn't exactly Prompto Strife at thirteen years old.

"Anyways," Biggs finally looks back down at the sword, "thanks, I'll keep that in mind."

Even though he's violated his own silent agreement with himself to not give out any information about Prompto or their relationship before he's seen his brother again, Cloud is oddly ok with it.

"Ready to head out again?" Tifa asks, and Cloud turns to see her making her way back in from the roof with Wedge. Biggs stands and hands off Cloud's sword without much ceremony, and begins to speak to Wedge.

Cloud spares Biggs another glance, but the man doesn't seem to notice. He's immediately engrossed in conversation with his friend, and the conversation about Prompto seems to be far from his mind suddenly.

"Yeah," the ex-SOLDIER answers, looking back to meet Tifa's curious eyes.

"Let's go," is all he says. Thankfully, Tifa sees no need to question him, and merely nods before making her way out of the room.

As Cloud follows her, he realizes that the ache in his chest isn't quite as sharp anymore.

The ex-SOLDIER definitely won’t be making friends here any time soon, but it’s possible that maybe these people aren’t so bad after all. 

...

  
  



	2. I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The Reactors,” he concludes, “that doesn’t seem to be as subtle as you’re going for.” 
> 
> Barret himself takes no real issue with destroying a Mako Reactor. Hell, he’s entertained the thought at least a thousand times since he joined AVALANCHE. But it’s just never been plausible to do, way too much risk for them to not be sure that they could pull it off and too high of a chance for collateral damage. But if the kid is serious about not wanting Shinra to start suddenly sending out troops to put them down (not that Barret believes that they’ll succeed in trying), then a bombing is a little extreme.
> 
> Blondie smirks at him in return.
> 
> “You’d be surprised at just how easy it is to sabotage the mako pump,”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back to all!
> 
> First I have to start by saying that the response to this fic is literally the greatest thing ever, it's made me so happy and excited to continue sharing this idea with you guys.
> 
> So without further ado, I will remind you guys that I own nothing, and to mind the tags, and to please enjoy and stay tuned for more notes at the end!

Tifa thinks that it's Cloud at first. 

When the young man with blond hair strides into the Seventh Heaven that night, it takes her a few minutes to even notice his presence (which is odd, considering that the bar is not that big inside and she has a perfect line of sight to the doors from behind the counter). 

Upon focusing on the guy dressed casually with his hands in his pockets, her heart leaps up to her throat and the name "Cloud" is on the very tip of her tongue.

But a few seconds of observation quickly proves that this is not Cloud. The face is  _ startlingly  _ close, but the hair is not quite spiky enough and Cloud has never gotten freckles from the sun. 

His younger brother did though. 

Tifa stares at the man as he walks up to the counter, looking around in a seemingly casual manner (Tifa knows better though, his posture is tense, his shoulders small, and he definitely took care to sneak in here alongside someone so that he wasn't immediately noticeable). The baby fat is almost all gone, he's significantly taller, shoulders broader, and he walks with an odd sort of grace that she definitely didn't remember him having. 

When he finally gets in front of her, Tifa is taken in by the odd violet tint to his blue eyes that definitely wasn't there before. Even still, seeing his face up close makes her certain. 

This is Prompto Strife.

He doesn't seem to recognize her though, because all he does is give her a once over and a smile before he's focusing on the bottles on display behind her.

"I'm really no good at the whole drinking thing," wow his voice sounds so different, not a single hint of a Nibel accent at all. "But I'm told that this is the best spot for miles," he shrugs with a little grin, "and that the bartender here mixes drinks worthy of braving the monsters for."

He doesn't recognize her, that much is obvious. But Tifa's not offended by it in the slightest. They never did talk that much back at Nibelheim, even if she and Cloud did eventually end up being close. And the Prompto in front of her is fundamentally different from the Prompto she remembers from home. It's hard to say exactly what it is about his demeanor that makes her certain of that, but Tifa can see it.

"That's what they're saying now?" She asks amusedly.

"Yep yep," Prompto says brightly, "so I figured the best way to get the best drink is to just come in and ask the bartender what her favorite is?"

"My favorite?" Tifa smiles despite the pounding of her heart.

"Yes ma'am," Prompto nods, you've obviously got some great taste," he spares a moment to look around the space, "love what you've done with the place."

Tifa gives a small laugh, "And how do you know it was me? How do you know I'm the bartender you're looking for?"

"The gloves," he shrugs in response.

That's a new one.

"My...gloves?" Tifa repeats.

"Yeah," Prompto takes a seat at one of the stools leans on the bar casually, "the bartender is the owner and the owner kicks some major ass with just her fists."

Tifa feels her eyebrows raise. She has that sort of reputation outside of Sector 7 as well?

"Those gloves look pretty well-used," Prompto nods at her hands, "and you're behind the bar," a shrug, "did I guess right?"

"You did," Tifa's impressed to say the very least. That is not how most people recognize her from word of mouth. "Did they give you a name though?" 

"Ah, that's where my sources ran dry I'm afraid." He laughs, "But I figure it's less creepy if I just ask you myself anyway."

"Tifa," she murmurs quitely, "Tifa Lockhart."

And she watches as the name seems to register with Prompto immediately, because the man's eyes widen ever so slightly, and he sits up straight, giving her another once over and making a small and confused noise. 

Then the recognition kicks in, a tension leaves his shoulders, something smooths out in his face and Prompto Strife looks at her.

"Tifa?"

She smiles warmly in return.

"Hi Prompto, it's been a while, hasn't it?"

…

Tifa admittedly doesn’t know Prompto that well.

He’d been a sickly child, too weak to really get up to any of the shenanigans that the young boys in their hometown participated in. The only time that Tifa really saw him was at the schoolhouse, and Prompto had not been one for conversation at first. Which made sense, considering that the kids of their small town were in general just awful to him when Cloud wasn’t around to get in their faces on Prompto’s behalf (Tifa looks back on these days with no small amount of shame, because she’d been so wholly unconcerned with the brothers being bullied that she didn’t even really notice when it happened most of the time). That had changed, eventually.

At some point around when Tifa was eight years old, Prompto had apparently begun to grow out of his ever-present sickness that had him in chronic pain. He’d been quick to make friends (if they could really be called that) after that, as Prompto took almost anything and everything with significantly more humor than his older brother did. Where Cloud was stand-offish and stoic and put his fists up if someone so much as insinuated anything negative about his little brother, Prompto merely laughed it off and joked about it until the kids essentially had no choice but to laugh with him. 

Despite how Prompto had eventually managed to forcefully endear himself to the rest of the kids of their town, this did not result in him becoming any closer to her. In fact, most of what Tifa knew about Prompto could be attributed to her watching Cloud with him after she and Cloud finally became something like friends to one another. 

(Cloud had even asked Tifa to be the one to look out for Prompto when he made the decision to leave town for Midgar, and she’d agreed. Only for Prompto to follow behind his older brother not a few months later.)

That being said, there’s a few traits that feel familiar to her as Prompto quickly establishes a routine of coming into the bar a few hours after they open every night.

For starters, Prompto is still so endearingly earnest in the way he praises people. 

“This. Is.  _ Awesome _ .” He says one time, eyes glittering with a subtle excitement as he sips at one of her new test drinks. It’s very reminiscent of how he’d excitedly compliment her and Cloud during their lessons in Martial Arts with Zangan when they were preteens. 

He also still has a taste for spicy foods, she realizes as he asks for the hottest wings she can manage one night. Tifa is amusedly reminded of one time where Cloud had complained that his mother and little brother both had “the mouths of dragons” and kept adding ungodly spices to their dinner without considering that it would “literally kill” Cloud. 

Prompto’s also still prone to going off on odd tangents in the middle of his statements whenever he gets excited or curious about something.

“The ID scanners on the trains are pretty cool,” He’s saying a few days after he’d shown up, “I wonder when they managed to install them along the tracks like that though? It has to be electro-mag based, definitely. There’s no other solid and reliable way to scan every single ID card and not have an astronomical margin of error...But I wonder how that works with the train tracks? They’d have to have figured out a way for the train magnets themselves to not interfere with the scanners, especially in cases where the train has to switch tracks...it probably actually had more to do with how the IDs are made then, there’s probably a specific polymer used in the cards plastic that gives off a frequency….hmm….they probably achieve that with materia, but that would mean-”

Beyond the fact that Prompto loses Tifa the moment he says the words “ _ electro-mag _ ”, the martial artist finds herself a bit confused about the fact that Prompto seems to have only recently learned about the train’s ID scanners. It’s almost like he hasn’t been in Midgar in the last two years since they were introduced.

(Later that week, she finds out that this is exactly the case.)

There’s also things that are starkly different about Prompto, from what Tifa can tell. 

The Prompto she remembers had always had a habit of fidgeting or moving around in place whenever he was bored or otherwise unoccupied.The Prompto of now sits almost deathly still when not in motion and there’s an odd sort of controlled tension to his body when he does move. Like he’s never truly relaxed or at ease and is always ready for something to happen to him. 

(This is a little uncomfortable for Tifa to think about, so she tries not to dwell on it too much.)

From what she remembers, Prompto had always been quick to laugh or make jokes as a child, but he also tended to miss social cues if they weren’t overt and in his face. Now, he still seems to have a an active sense of humor and he tends to punctuate a lot of his sentences with a tiny chuckle and small smile, but there’s a solemness to his tone and on more than one occasion, Tifa’s been taken aback by just how dark his humor can be. 

(Tifa had made a joke once, in response to Prompto offering to go pick up something for her from the local junk shop. “How do I know I can trust you to get the right thing?” She’d laughed. It was one hundred percent a joke, for even though Prompto had only been coming around for just over a week, Tifa had already decided that he was good company and a reliable guy.

“Guess you just have to take a chance,” Prompto had given a small grin.

“But what if I’m betrayed?” Tifa had asked with all the dramatic flair she’d expect from Jessie, but had already grabbed a pen and notepad to write down the name of the part she needed.

“Then kill me,” the blond had said so seriously that Tifa had paused in her motion and looked up at him with wide eyes. Prompto had merely shrugged and chuckled a bit, though his face was blank. “That’s the best response to betrayal,” he’d said.

Tifa had stared, unable to come up with words for that, and then Prompto suddenly gave a grin.

“Just kidding!” He’d said jovially, “You’d miss my freckles too much.”

Prompto then laughed. Tifa couldn’t quite bring herself to.)

What’s more, not only has Prompto gained a much sharper level of social awareness- which he’s displayed in conversations with some of the bar’s patrons- but Tifa also gets the feeling that he’s actually been guiding some of their interactions here and there. At the very least, it becomes obvious to her that Prompto sought the Seventh Heaven out specifically for information, and not for the drinks. But by the time she understands this; Tifa’s already helped him find Johnny, described the entirety of Sector 7 to him, talked about most of the individuals on the city watch and connected Barret’s name to Prompto curiously asking about a man with a gun for an arm. 

And all she’s gotten out of Prompto is that he left Shinra on unpleasant terms, was something called a “Turk” for almost the entirety of his time with Shinra, and that he will not touch the topic of Cloud.

The idea of him being ex-Shinra and gathering information for some reason he’s not sharing with her outright makes Tifa a bit nervous, and the way he completely redirects the conversation anytime she so much as hints at his older brother is frustrating. Still, Tifa’s not able to make herself distrust Prompto. Because there’s something so wonderfully earnest about him still, and he really is very pleasant company and his presence comforts her while Barret and the others seem to be making bolder moves and further alienating the AVALANCHE HQ cell. 

When Prompto casually says, “So I might be able to help this Barret guy and his friends out with their thing,” one night, Tifa knows that he’s talking about AVALANCHE. Whether or not it’s the reason he sought out the Seventh Heaven in the first place, Tifa doesn’t know (and she’s not sure she wants to know, if she’s being honest). What she does know though, is that despite everything, Tifa  _ trusts  _ him.

So what she says in response is, “I’ll see about setting up a meet.”

Prompto smiles.

...

When Barret finds out that a Turk has found their bar, he's  _ livid _ .

He admittedly doesn't know much about the Turks, because Shinra has never advertised them like they've advertised their military and SOLDIER. What he does know though, is that they're bad news. 

Dyne hadn't been the type to be spooked by much, but one thing that would make the man go quiet and uncharacteristically meek was mention of the Turks. Barret hadn’t known anything about them then, but Dyne’s reactions were telling enough.

Even now, being in charge of his own faction in AVALANCHE, the man finds that he’s never been able to get too much concrete information on the organization. What little he does know though, is that they seem to be a group of silent attack dogs for Shinra that are brought in when something needs to be taken care of under the radar. 

All in all, they’re  _ dangerous _ .

So when Tifa pulls him aside one day and tells him that a kid claiming to be an ex-Turk waltzed into the Seventh Heaven and started asking questions, Barret is immediately ready to take up arms. Especially when he finds out that the kid is currently in the fucking bar.

“Barret wait!” Tifa says frantically, grabbing onto his arm and halting his movement far too easily for someone of her stature (Barret would feel some type of way about that if he hadn’t already seen how well the woman handles herself in a fight). “Just listen for a second!”

“Listen to what?” Barret demands, whirling around to face her. “There’s literally a Shinra elite upstairs in the bar, one floor down from where my daughter sleeps at night! What the hell am I supposed to listen to?”

They’re in the basement of the bar, and only Biggs is sitting down there with them, Jessie and Wedge both occupied with duties elsewhere. The other man in the room hasn’t had anything to say just yet, only frowning mildly when Tifa had explained that this kid was apparently ex-Shinra.

“Listen to  _ me _ ,” Tifa says firmly, staring at his eyes past his sunglasses. Damn, she’s good at that. “Do you really think that I’d risk you guys like that?”

Barret huffs.

No, he doesn’t. Tifa’s one of the people that Barret is sure he can trust unconditionally with both his life  _ and  _ Marlene’s. Not many can get that out of him, especially not many people here in Midgar. If Tifa says that this person isn't a danger to them, then it’s more than likely that this person isn’t actually a danger to them. And he’d never question her normally.

But something about this is different. 

There’s a frantic nature to how she’s going about this, that Barret isn't used to seeing from Tifa. It’s like she’s almost...desperate, in a way, to keep this kid in contact. What with the way she wants Barret to go up and talk to him about potentially helping them out. It’s confusing, and Barret’s sure that there’s an answer to why she’s being like this hidden in her past that she doesn’t talk about (especially considering that this kid is apparently from her past), but this is first time in a long time that Barret finds himself hesitant to just take Tifa at her word about something.

“You know the kid?” the man asks again though. Because as skeptical as he is, this is still Tifa. And she’s never let him down yet.

“I do,” Tifa nods, “he’s from my hometown. I haven’t spoken to him in years, but…”

“But?”

“But he’s still the same, in a way.” Tifa says quietly, almost to herself, “I’ve been talking to him for a couple weeks now, and I can say that I’m sure of that.”

“But he won’t talk about why he left Shinra.” Biggs points out, recalling what Tifa had been saying before Barret had started for the elevator.

At this, Tifa flinches. 

“No, he won’t.” She admits, “but I don’t think that means he’s lying about cutting ties with them.”

“Maybe not,” Biggs shrugs, “but it’s still not a good look.”

Tifa sighs heavily, “I get the feeling that Shinra has put him through a lot.”

“Yeah,” Barret snorts, “him and everyone else on the goddamn planet. Difference bein’ that he signed up for it.”

“And then left,” once again Tifa insists, “I really think that you should just talk to him, ok? You guys have been hitting roadblocks lately, imagine how much a former Shinra employee with his experience could help out!”

Barret merely grunts.

“There is that,” Biggs is the one who speaks, “could always just have the kid prove himself to us. Have him get us something that makes progress.”

“Sounds good on paper,” Barret huffs, “but we gotta give him something in return, right? What if he screws us?”

“He won’t do that!” Tifa says adamantly, face set in stone. “I just know it.”

Barret throws his head back and groans. 

“Come on, guys.” The woman pleads quietly, “I know I’m asking for a lot here, but please just talk to him. For me?”

At this, Barret shifts on his feet, more than a bit uncomfortably. Because it’s a dick move to push Tifa to the point where she feels the need to almost beg, and it makes him feel like shit.

This must really be that important to her.

He looks at Biggs, who stares back for a moment before shrugging.

“It’d be pretty sweet to have someone like that on our side,” is all the man says.

And then he looks back at Tifa, who is still looking at him with that face. No way in hell is she backing down.

Barret heaves a sigh.

“Fine, I’ll talk to him.”

Tifa smiles.

“But I’ll do it my way,” he’s quick to say.

Tifa stops smiling.

“Oh no,” she shakes her head. Barret grins back.

“Oh  _ yes _ , baby.”

Tifa is the one who sighs this time.

…

Barret’s way starts with Tifa taking him up through the back way (because the bar is still open), and pointing out the person they’ve spent the last hour arguing about.

He’s...not impressed.

“ _ That _ kid?” Barret asks incredulously, pointing at the scrawny-looking blond guy sitting at the bar and laughing with one of Tifa’s part-timers.

“That’s the one.”

“ _ Seriously _ ?” Barret murmurs. The kid looks like he wouldn’t even make it as a standard Shinra trooper, much less as someone with some legit clout to his title. He says as much to Tifa.

“At first glance, I’d agree with you.” She says with a nod, “but just pay close attention when you’re speaking with him for a bit, and it’ll start to make a weird sort of sense.”

“Hmph, I’ll believe that when I see it.”

The blond guy looks like a normal average joe. He’s dressed in casual clothes that are characteristic of someone who lives in the slums, though they do seem to be in better repair than most. The only thing that really stands out about him is his hair, which is styled in some odd unbalanced spiky style and is a shade of blond that most people from this part of the world don’t attain naturally. 

“You could just see it by going up to him and talking to him,” Tifa says significantly.

“Nah,” Barret shakes his head, “like I said, we’re doin’ this my way. Which means we’re waiting for Jessie and Wedge to get back.”

“What if he can’t stay that long?” Tifa asks.

“Well that’s where you come in,” he grins at her eye roll, “chat him up. You said it’s been five years, right? Y'all must still have some stuff to catch up on.”

“I think you missed the part where I said that he doesn’t want to talk about his time in Shinra,” Tifa mutters, “but I’ll do it. You won’t be too much?”

“When am I ever?” Barret asks innocently.

Tifa shoots him a scathing look and says nothing else, walking in the direction of the guy. Barret spares enough time to see the kid turn around and smile brightly at her before he walks out to the front of the bar to wait for Jessie and Wedge.

He’s not waiting for too long, as Jessie and Wedge both arrive within the hour. But by the time that Barret has updated them on the situation and the plan for blondie, the bar crowd is starting to thin out, and Biggs has come out to join them at one of the outside porch tables.

About ten minutes or so later, the blond kid walks leisurely out of the bar, whistling idly and not sparing the group of them a single glance. The group stares after him.

“He’s cute,” Jessie says, arching an eyebrow.

“He is,” Biggs frowns, “like a harmless-college-student-cute. That’s really who Tifa says is an ex-Turk?”

“Maybe being cute is how he catches people off guard?” Wedge shrugs, “Kinda like some of the pickpockets around Wall Market?”

“Maybe?” Jessie shrugs, “None of those pickpockets are  _ that  _ cute though.”

“Priorities,” Barret says sternly, “y'all remember the rundown?”

“Yep.”

“Of course.”

“Sure thing, boss!”

“Good,” Barret watches the kid’s back as he moves farther away, “now’s good then.”

With nods of acknowledgement, his team gets up from their seats and all walk down the stairs to begin silently tailing the blond from different directions. Barret, for his part, begins to follow after the guy without bothering to try and hide it. 

He doesn’t let blondie get more than ten feet away at any point in time, and the occasional glance to the sparse night crowd reveals that Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie are never too far away either. The kid doesn’t even seem to notice, walking along and bobbing his head to some unknown beat. Barret scoffs.

_ Some Turk _ .

Barret thinks that he’s just going to go to the station based on his path, but blondie surprises him by taking a turn and moving instead towards the junkyard and warehouses.

“The hell?” he mutters.  _ That’s shady as shit _ .

The surrounding bystanders quickly thin out with the guy’s new trajectory, so Barret gives a little bit more space as he follows him, but blondie merely begins whistling to himself again, seemingly no care in the world as he enters an area that’s regularly populated by monsters. 

“Ok,” Wedge whispers as he falls into step next to Barret, “now  _ this  _ is kind of weird.”

“Sure is,” Barret nods, watching as the blond finally seems to stop before one of the abandoned buildings. He doesn’t turn around, but he does seem to be scanning the area for something. Barret stops as well, which prompts Wedge to do the same, and they watch together as blondie nods to himself and suddenly turns around to stare directly at them.

“Guess here’s good enough,” the kid says casually, “hey there.”

His words are accented by a little wave. And Barret immediately realizes that he’s underestimated blondie.

“When’d you make us?” He asks instead of offering a greeting in return.

“Well you, I made when you were pointing at me with Tiifa back in the bar.”

Barret’s occasionally glad for the level of ambiguity his sunglasses give. As he’s helpless to stop his eyes from widening, now is one of those times.

“The other three?” Blondie shrugs with a smile, “When you guys stood up from the table and started following me.”

Barret can only stare as the kid looks around curiously.

“Speaking of which,” blondie says curiously, “you two can come out now, if you want. Probably easier to talk with everyone that way.”

There’s a moment of silence in the area before Barret crosses his arms and nods. 

A rustling from somewhere off to his right, and the Biggs is striding up to stand next to him. A moment later, Jessie appears silently on Biggs’ other side. Thus leaving them all standing in a line about fifteen away from this kid that has just led them on through town to this place.

“Ok,” Jessie mutters, “maybe he really is a Turk.”

“ _ Ex-Turk _ ,” blondie corrects. Jessie coughs uncomfortably in response. 

Barret continues to stare. Because he’d barely heard Jessie, so how did…?

“Anyways,” the kid says thoughtfully, “I don’t think that you’re here to attack me, because I can’t see Tifa purposely stalling me in order to put me in that type of position.”

Barret stiffens at the mention of Tifa’s name.

“So I guess you’re here to grill me?” Blondie continues, “Because Tifa must’ve told you about me, so naturally you’ve got to make sure I’m legit. Can’t go around inviting just anyone around AVALANCHE, after all.”

The tension in the air spikes as Barret considers flicking the safety off of his arm. Because there’s no way in hell that Tifa would have told him that they’re AVALANCHE before Barret had even spoken to him once. Which means that he found out somehow in the past few weeks that he’s been coming around.

Or it means that he already knew before he came to Seventh Heaven the first time.

“ _Holy_ _shit_ ,” Wedge squeaks. Blondie laughs.

“Holy shit.” The kid repeats, and Barret’s suddenly having no trouble believing that they’re dealing with someone with clout to their title. “Well,” blondie gestures to them, “grill away.”

“What?” Biggs asks.

“You wanted to grill me, right? Question me?” Blondie spreads his hands out, “This was a bit of a dramatic way of going about it, but whatever works for you, I guess.”

There’s silence as they all just stare at the kid.

“Should I just start?” Blondie wonders aloud, “I guess I will. Introductions first?” 

And as he sends them the same bright smile that he’d given Tifa earlier, Barret can just tell for some reason that this is either going to turn out the way Tifa wanted it to, or they’re going to have some major problems coming their way.

“Prompto Strife,” he waves again, “ex-Turk.”

…

“I’m gonna keep it simple,” the kid says later on that night, as they’re seated in the bar after its closing hours. “I need AVALANCHE to start making some noise, and I have some ways to help the process along.”

Barret hums quietly, staring Blondie down from behind his sunglasses. Marlene’s with Tifa at her apartment at Barret’s request. Biggs and Jessie are flanking Barret as he sits across from the kid, while Wedge is standing at the door, assault rifle in hands. 

(Blondie had watched Wedge move in place with a curious expression and outright  _ chuckled  _ when he saw the weapon.)

(It was a little disturbing, to be perfectly honest.)

“What do you mean by noise?” Biggs questions, because he’s the one who’s good at getting information without being outright hostile like Barret or playing coy like Jessie. 

“I mean something to get the Shinra top heads moving,” Blondie responds easily, “something that’s a little more than the nuisance of stealing from supply factories or sabotaging transports.”

“Did your research, huh?” Jessie says quietly. To most, she’d sound and look impressed, but Barret can hear the subtle lilt at the end of her words that displays her discomfort. 

“I was a  _ spy _ ,” Blondie says wryly, “specifically tasked with information gathering, profiling, and tech support. And you guys have a problem with keeping information confidential.”

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?” Barret demands, irritated. Blondie, for his part, directs a significant look to Barret’s gun-arm.

“That’s not subtle,” he states, “so you’ve already got a face of the group that anyone in the slums can recognize, so it was stupid easy to figure out that there was a group that operated out of Sector 7 that answered to a man with a gun for an arm. Was just as easy to figure out that you guys’ base was this bar.”

Barret exchanges looks with Biggs, who shrugs. There’s really not much that they can say to refute that.

“Though I didn’t know that you guys were an AVALANCHE cell at first,” the kid admits, “I wasn’t interested, I figured that you were some street gang or merc group. I didn’t go to the bar intending to find AVALANCHE.”

“Who were you looking for then?” Biggs asks curiously.

“Johnny,” the kid says with a chuckle, “I needed to be put in contact with some people in Wall Market, and the word on the street was that he knew everyone and was bad at keeping secrets.”

Barret huffs.  _ Johnny _ .

Of course.

“He’s how I figured out that you guys were AVALANCHE, by the way.” Blondie says, suddenly serious. “You guys should probably address that, he doesn’t know that you’re AVALANCHE himself, but he knows enough about how you guys move and it’s ridiculously simple to connect you all to specific incidents just based off of what he says about you guys. Plus he uses names and everything.”

Barret’s intending to ask what the hell Blondie wants with anyone in Wall Market (because someone with a face like his should never purposefully seek out people in Wall Market), but it all goes out of his head when the rest of what the kid’s saying registers in his head.

Johnny.

_ Of fucking course _ .

“Goddammit,” he swears, letting his head fall back to let out a long-suffering sigh. 

“Thanks for that heads up,” Biggs says after rolling his eyes, “but I still don’t get why you came to us? If you want noise, your best bet would have been HQ.”

Barret looks back down to stare at the kid again. Because that’s true, as much as it annoys him to admit it. AVALANCHE HQ has the potential to be infinitely more effective, what with their military-grade equipment and their vastly bigger numbers. It sucks that they’ve been shunning Barret’s cell lately, all because he wanted them to get off of their asses more often and do  _ more _ .

“Because that’s too dangerous,” Blondie explains with a shake of his head, “I need noise, not a catastrophe.”

“And what would be wrong with a catastrophe?” Barret questions, because that sounds to him like the kid doesn’t want to make life that difficult to his old pals.

“You  _ don’t  _ want to see what Shinra is willing to do in response to a catastrophe,” Blondie says very seriously, eyes a bit haunted. “I need their attention to be diverted, but I’m not looking for all out civil war or a revolution.”

“What if we want a revolution though?” Barret challenges. The kid huffs and scowls at him.

“Then you build one on your own time and with your own resources,” he says firmly, “I’ll give you what you need to start getting Shinra and the people of Midgar to take you guys more seriously, but that’s it.”

“What do you want out of this though?” Jessie asks before Barret can open his mouth and tell the kid what’s what.

“I need-” at this point the Blondie seems to fumble, losing some of his relaxed and controlled demeanor and really looking like a damn kid as he looks away. “I need…” Blondie sighs, “I need some information, and I need to get into the Shinra Building to find it.”

This time Barret exchanges looks with Biggs, Jessie and Wedge. 

“And there’s definitely a  _ kill-on-sight  _ order out on me,” Blondie says plainly, and it’s actually a little horrifying how matter-of-fact his tone is. “Not that most troopers or staff would know that it’s me if they saw me, considering that this is the first time I’ve been back in the city in five years.”

Barret pulls his sunglasses off to stare at the kid. Like, really stare at him. 

_ Five years? _

“But I lose that anonymity the moment I get into the Shinra building to get what I need, so I can’t afford to fuck it up.” Blondie explains, “it needs to be a one and done. I’ll have one shot, so to maximize my chances, I need Shinra diverting resources.”

The kid then shakes his head.

“But I don’t want to endanger lives other than my own, it sucks that I even have to ask you guys to do this.” He says quietly, “So,  _ noise _ .  _ Not  _ a catastrophe, something to make Shinra pay attention to you guys, but not outright aggress on you all back before you get a chance to bolster your support.”

“How old are you?” Biggs asks suddenly, and Barret looks to see that Biggs is giving Blondie that look. The look that he gets in his eyes when he talks about visiting the Leaf House. And Barret knows then and there that Biggs is sold.

The kid seems to startle a bit at the question, looking almost confused for a moment before he answers.

“You don’t want to know,” is what the kid ends up saying, and Barret has half a mind to press him for an answer, but he ultimately decides that he probably doesn’t want to know, in all honesty.

Biggs seems to come to the same conclusion, because he merely nods and shrugs, but Barret can see how his eyes have softened a bit and  _ goddamn it _ . Biggs isn’t just sold. He’s  _ invested _ .

Tifa’s totally going to get her way.

“That info you need to get must be super important, huh?” Wedge muses aloud, moving a few steps closer to the table. “It has to be, if you’re gonna go in there knowing that they’re supposed to kill you on sight.”

Blondie smiles without humor.

“It’s pretty damn important, yeah.”

Wedge sniffs and nods. Barret stifles another sigh, because now  _ Wedge  _ is sold.

“So what’s your plan for distracting Shinra enough for them to move around resources but not make them feel all wrathful?” Jessie is leaning forward now, having completely dropped her mask of coy elegance. 

She’s sold too.

“Simple,” Blondie shrugs, “you mess with their biggest investment, give them the chance to fix it, and then do it again.”

Barret arches an eyebrow. Shinra’s biggest investments.

“The Reactors,” he concludes, “that doesn’t seem to be as subtle as you’re going for.” 

Barret himself takes no real issue with destroying a Mako Reactor. Hell, he’s entertained the thought at least a thousand times since he joined AVALANCHE. But it’s just never been plausible to do, way too much risk for them to not be sure that they could pull it off and too high of a chance for collateral damage. But if the kid is serious about not wanting Shinra to start suddenly sending out troops to put them down (not that Barret believes that they’ll succeed in trying), then a bombing is a little extreme.

Blondie smirks at him in return.

“You’d be surprised at just how easy it is to sabotage the mako pump,” is what he says, “halts all production and activity for at least a week. The Reactor will default to backup energy, which is powered by hydraulics. It’ll suck for the Sector, life will slow down like crazy, so it’ll be up to you guys to make a damn good case for your cause to get people to accept that they can live without mako energy. Shinra will increase security, but most of their attention will be on fixing the pump, and just before they do, you hit another one. Rinse, repeat,  _ bam _ !”

Blondie claps his hands lazily and then gestures at them.

“You’ve got an effective message being sent and significant progress being made without the violent extremist connotations.” 

Barret stares. Then he looks at his crew, who are all also staring at Blondie. He then meets the kid’s oddly colored eyes. And he feels his own lips tug up into a grin.

Ok. Barret’s sold.

Tifa’s going to be  _ so  _ smug.

…

_ Prompto _ , as Barret eventually begins to call him, is meticulous in how he supports them. He creates them all new fake IDs that actually get them up topside without leaving a trail straight back to Sector 7. He schools Biggs in the quickest and most accurate ways to hack into terminals commonly found in Reactors. He provides Wedge with a special whistle that will draw the attention of Shinra’s mutant guard dogs. He provides Jessie with a list of supplies to create reliable and concentrated explosives that are much safer to use than her own, and then he walks her through the process of making said explosives, step-by-step until she’s got it down.

The kid’s cautious about contacting them when he’s not actually around in Sector 7, only communicating through letters couried by local Watch members or by one specific public PHS terminal found on the road between the Sector 7 Undercity and Wall Market. 

Barret occasionally finds himself thinking that Prompto’s too damn nice and cheerful to have been a spy. But then the kid will suddenly criticize them for doing something so miniscule that they hadn’t even noticed they’d done it, and explain how Turk worth their stripes would take that one thing and find not only them, but all of their families and friends as well. 

It’s...sobering, to say the least.

All in all though, Prompto’s good people, Barret decides. The older man finds himself feeling significantly more sympathetic to the kid’s goals when he and Tifa deduce that the information that Prompto’s searching for simply has to involve this older brother of his that he never wants to talk about.

(When Tifa presents the ex-SOLDIER to Barret and the crew for the first time, he can immediately see the physical resemblance, and he thinks it's a shame that Prompto’s set to be out of contact with them for at least two weeks. 

And then Cloud Strife  _ opens his fucking mouth _ and he’s unrepently an  _ asshole  _ and Barret seriously considers the idea that Tifa has gotten something wrong. Because the ex-SOLDIER is one of the most callous and self-centered people that Barret has ever had the displeasure of meeting and it’s actually impossible to reconcile that with how damn  _ sweet  _ Prompto is by nature.

But Barret would have to be blind or an idiot to not notice how Strife seems to get visibly stressed out and anxious anytime someone presses him for information about his relationship with his younger brother. The ex-SOLDIER also agrees to a much lower rate than he started out asking for when he finds out that Prompto is involved.)

(Jessie’s bomb does  _ not  _ go off the way it’s supposed to.

Barret would think that Prompto was secretly a snake the entire time, but Barret’s literally seen the kid make the bomb from scratch and seen him detonate it multiple times with the exact same steps that he’d given to Jessie. Which would mean that Jessie either made it incorrectly, or accidently picked up a much stronger blasting agent then she was supposed to. 

He doesn’t say anything about that though, but he doesn’t attempt to comfort Jessie either. This wasn’t their intent, but it’s happened, and so they need to own it.

Because Barret looks at the havoc and destruction that their mission has wrought, looks at the topsiders crying and shouting and cursing the name AVALANCHE, and looks at the disturbed news anchor’s face as she relays the steadily rising casualty and injured count. 

He’s reminded of a small mining town, of holding his best friend's life in his right hand, of losing both his best friend and his right arm, of feeling the grief and horror upon realizing that there’s no way that he wife could have survived, of cradling a crying Marlene in his left arm.

And he thinks that this is what Revolution looks like.)

...

"You and him are the same height now, I think."

Cloud turns from where he's wiping off wererat blood off of his sword to find Tifa watching him thoughtfully.

"Me and Prompto?" Cloud asks.

"Yeah," Tifa nods with a small smile, "it's just so interesting. I remember he used to be so much shorter than you." 

"Yeah well," the ex-SOLDIER shrugs, "I'm not all that tall anyway, doesn't really surprise me that he'd catch up."

“I guess,” the martial artist shrugs, “things are just so different now, is all. I’m excited for you guys to get a chance to see each other again and it’s really not even my place to be.”

Cloud merely hums, finishing his task of cleaning off his blade and reattaching it to his back. 

Not that he’d say it aloud, but Cloud is pretty sure that some of what he’s feeling (beyond the anxiety and worry) is excitement. But then again, he’s feeling  _ so much _ , that it’s pretty hard to define most of it. All he knows is that he’s going to see his little brother again, and that thought alone is still too overwhelming for Cloud to know what to do with it. 

It’s bordering on sunset by the time that Tifa finally decides that they’ve done enough to really establish Cloud as a merc, and she begins to lead him back to the bar. 

Despite the absolute annoyance of some of the tasks he’d been contracted to complete today, Cloud still manages to find himself thinking optimistically about his progress. Whether or not he’s going to continue helping out AVALANCHE or not depends entirely on whether or not they’re willing to keep hiring him, even if he can tell that Tifa wants him to stick around. 

But even if Barret turns out to be uninterested in his help again, Cloud thinks that he’s got a decent chance of getting a good thing going here. Any reason to have any concrete ties or interaction with Shinra will cease to matter when he’s got Prompto in front of him again.

The thought leads to the stirrings of one those damn headaches that can very quickly turn into migraines, so Cloud quickly shakes his head of the thought and instead focuses on listening to the chatter of the town as he follows Tifa.

From he can tell, a good portion of the City Watch seem to be AVALANCHE members. But beyond them and his landlady, the support for the group seems to be lukewarm at best around the citizens of the Undercity. No one seems to be outright denouncing AVALANCHE from what he can hear, but they’re certainly questioning the group’s methods. 

Tifa seems to notice too, if the way her shoulders seem to get subtly smaller as they pass another television talking about the damage to Sector 5 is any indication. Not for the first time, Cloud finds himself wondering whether or not any of them is really prepared to see this through.

Especially considering that Shinra has to address this now, the ex-SOLDIER thinks to himself. There’s no way that the top heads of Shinra can justify not directing their attention to AVALANCHE now, not after the spectacle that was last night.

He wonders if they realize just how far Shinra is willing to go to preserve their power and standing in the world.

That thought follows him and Tifa all the way to Seventh Heaven and to his seat at the bar where Tifa prepares him an admittedly, pretty damn good drink. It rings out in his head as he sits at the bar and waits for AVALANCHE to finish discussing their details down in their secret basement (and he briefly takes a second to wonder if Barret knows how dangerous it is to have his terrorist meetings take place in the same building where he and his daughter sleep at night). It echoes and resounds as he’s told that they’re not in fact, going to rehire him, and Barret tells him to leave (and he spares another second to wonder whether or not Tifa will be ok going on the mission just because she looks so uncomfortable with the idea of another bombing). 

And then he vaguely hears the doors to the bar swing open. The conversations in the room suddenly halt, but Cloud’s too busy staring down at his drink and thinking about what he’s going to do tomorrow to think about it. 

And then he hears a new (yet familiar) voice say a single word that wipes all of Cloud’s thoughts from his head and causes the ache in his chest to spike painfully.

“ _ Cloud _ ?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, I'm so sorry for that tease at the end lol, but it just seemed like the natural best conclusion for this chapter, but don't worry, we will definitely be seeing a reunion the next go round!
> 
> Not much to say here actually, just further establishing Prompto as a character in this canon and having him meet and talk with Tifa and Barret, getting some foresight into some character bonds and whatnot.
> 
> On the topic of Barret, I feel like while he didn't necessarily want for the bombing at the beginning of the game to go down the way it did, he also seemed the most ready to rationalize and accept it as part of the job. I also feel like while Cloud mostly seems to not acknowledge it in game, we also get the feeling that he's thinking about it, so it makes sense to me that he'd be thinking about the potential consequences of getting not only Shinra's attention, but all of Midgar's attention in that way.
> 
> On another note, I finally finished the remake like a day ago at the time of posting this and and holy damn, did I love it. The character work and dialogue in that game is just superb to me, and the attention to detail and expanding everything to put it in more realistic context is amazing. I, like many, have mixed feelings about the direction they went as far as the ending, but i ultimately think it's not a bad thing, and I'm definitely excited for the next installment. 
> 
> That all being said, I think I can confidently say that I'm going to be working with the remake's canon in this work. Anything post Midgar will probably be fair game to some heavy divergence lol, but I will say that I'm aiming to change/alter story beats as little as possible here. 
> 
> Anyways, that's all for now folks, please stay tuned for the next chapter and as always stay Happy and Healthy!


	3. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “But my point is,” Prompto barrels on, “yes, I needed to find Cloud. Him being around changes things for sure. But there’s still dots that I need connected if we’re going to be able to truly be done with Shinra and be safe outside of their influence.”
> 
> “And to connect those dots,” Barret realizes, “ya still need to get into the building.”
> 
> Prompto nods.
> 
> “That’s why I’m coming with you guys tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello to all, Dawn is back with another update!
> 
> As always, I'm extremely happy and in love with the kind response to this story so far.
> 
> There's not much that I have to say right here, other than to remind that I own nothing and to mind the tags. Without further ado, please enjoy!

_ To say that Cloud has always been protective of his younger brother is a massive understatement. _

_ He's only two years old when he holds his one month old brother in his arms for the first time. Cloud doesn't know it at the time, but the warmth that he feels in his chest at the sight of Prompto will eventually go on to be the one thing that keeps him going when he has nothing else to turn to. Prompto will eventually come to be Cloud's rock, his light. There will come a time when Cloud will be willing to let the world burn if it means that he can protect his younger brother. _

_ But Cloud at two years old doesn't think of anything like that. All Cloud at two years old thinks is that his little is really very soft and squishy, so people will have to be careful with him. Cloud at two years old already knows that he'll be the one to make people be careful with Prompto if they forget it themselves. _

...

Reno’s tailing the Ancient girl when he gets the call.

“Yo,” he says in greeting, not bothering to look at the caller ID. 

“ _ It’s been quite a while, Reno _ .” 

The red-head immediately stops in place where he’s been following the girl up to the church. Aerith, with her ever-present and ever-weird intuition, stops as well a few dozen feet ahead, and turns to look back in Reno’s direction with a frown. Likely wondering why he’d stopped. It’s an odd balance that they’ve struck over the past year since he and Rude took over the day-to-day observations of the Ancient. Rude is the one who will silently walk around her town and keep tabs on her schedule. Reno will follow her from a distance whenever she leaves the Undercity, and take out any monsters that he thinks might overwhelm her by herself (which admittedly isn’t many). Aerith tolerates it when it’s just him, and they’ve even been able to have an amicable laugh together here and there when the girl’s tendency to space out forces Reno to get in close to help her out. 

(Aerith does  _ not _ , however, tolerate it whenever Reno brings infantry troops or Tseng along. Those times, she does everything in her power to give them the slip or send them on a merry chocobo chase.)

The girl's not who has Reno’s focus right now though. All of that is entirely devoted to the accented voice on the other side of the line that he hasn’t heard in a year. 

He’d have been completely fine if it had stayed that way.

“What do you want, yo?” Reno demands. He begins walking again, because he has a job to do. Aerith -though she can’t possibly hear him- seems to notice, and continues on her path to the church herself.

“ _ To share some information. _ ”

“How generous,” the red-head sneers, even though he knows it can’t be seen. “What makes you think that I’m interested?”

“ _ It involves your protege _ ,” the voice on the other side responds calmly, confidently. As though it’s a given that the words are going to make Reno pay attention.

And  _ fuck _ , do they ever make Reno pay attention.

“Didn’t learn your goddamn lesson last time, huh?” he taunts, making no move to hide the hostility in his tone. He then stops as two hedgehog pies hop out in front of Aerith’s path, to which the woman immediately produces that retractable staff that they’d left in her garden years ago. The monsters are small fry, not Kings at least, so Reno sees no need to intervene and allows himself to focus on his PHS as he stops to wait.

“You keep fuckin’ with him,” Reno goes on when the voice doesn’t respond immediately, “and he’s gonna really put you down one of these days.”

A sigh can be heard from the other side of the line.

“ _ Despite what you might believe Reno _ ,” the voice says impassionately, “ _ I have no intention of continuing my hunt for Prompto Strife. _ ”

Reno merely huffs in response, arching an eyebrow as he sees Aerith do that thing of hers where she lays down a circle of some kind and then starts throwing out spells in twos. It’s never  _ not  _ impressive. 

“ _ Beyond the fact that there is no active mission to track him down anymore with the President moving resources around _ ,” the voice continues, “ _ I myself am more than aware of how my attempts to subdue him went last time. I’ve no desire to spend another month on mandatory medical leave. _ ”

“I guess the fuck not,” Reno snorts, watching the girl blast away the last monster with ice magic. Aerith then fixes her dress (which doesn’t need fixing, because she always comes out of little struggles like that looking as immaculate as she was before), and directs a small wave in Reno’s general direction. 

“ _ This information is more for his and your benefit in the long run, anyway. _ ”

“How so?” Reno asks curiously, beginning to walk as Aerith starts moving again.

“ _ You’re aware of the bombing from last night? _ ”

“Who the hell  _ isn’t _ ?” the red-head asks darkly, remembering the way his PHS had lit up with messages and calls not a minute after the shit went down.

Just the thought of it is enough to give him a headache. It’s more than a little concerning, because Reno had thought that they were finally done with the group AVALANCHE. Or at the very least, he’d thought that they were crippled enough to not be able to do damage on that scale again. They’d become more passive in the last few years, more an annoyance than an actual hindrance, enough so that the Turks were finally able to pull back from dealing with them so often.

“ _ Well, it would appear that our lovely Quicksilver’s hands have touched the situation. _ ”

Reno’s instantly ready to snap and tell the voice not to fucking call him that, when the words really register.

“No fuckin’ way,” the red-head swears. By now, Aerith has reached the double doors of the church. “Strife doesn’t do terrorism, yo.”

Prompto wasn’t one of the usual recruits for a Turk. Reno, Rude and the grand majority of the Turk’s ranks were pulled from the streets of Midgar at ungodly young ages (for Reno, it was seven) and groomed to be the hidden knives of Shinra. In most cases, they’d be nothing without the organization and owed their entire livelihoods to it.

The Strife kid was something completely different in all ways. For one, he wasn’t from Midgar and at one point he’d been in consistent contact with his mother and older brother (at least before Nibelheim screwed that up). He also wasn’t brought in as a recruit until he was thirteen years old, which was significantly older than most of them. Prompto also hadn’t been particularly impressive at first. Most Turks got picked up because they’d done something to stand out or displayed a level of skill or street savviness that impressed the recruiters. 

Other than having surprisingly good instincts, situational awareness and a prodigious mind for computers and mechanics, Prompto was just like any average joe in the infantry when they’d dumped him in Reno’s lap to be trained.

(Of course, Strife went on to completely prove himself on the field. There was a reason why he’d picked up the moniker “ _ Quicksilver _ ” by the time he was sixteen.)

(And naturally, Reno had eventually come to understand the  _ actual  _ reason why the Turks had taken the kid in. But that still makes him more than a little uncomfortable, so he tries not to think of it that often.)

Point being, Prompto had never had the unshakeable and almost desperate loyalty to Shinra or the Turks that most of them had developed over time. He was also extremely empathetic and a generally nice person. So if any one of them were to be swayed over to AVALANCHE’s tree-hugging, eco-friendly agenda, then it would definitely be Prompto. 

Except for the fact that Prompto  _ hated  _ AVALANCHE. 

If there was one thing that the kid had always looked unfavorably on, it was the use of terrorism to get a message across. Prompto had despised AVALANCHE for not being able to keep the collateral damage to a minimum, and while he often didn’t like being given missions to put down noteworthy enemies of Shinra, Prompto would always take down known bombers and arsonists from AVALANCHE with a startling ease.

So, there’s no way in hell that Prompto could have been involved in the bombing from last night.

“ _ While he did not participate in the actual bombing of the Reactor, according to surveillance gathered, _ ” the voice says calmly, “f _ urther investigation of the suspects has revealed that they’re carrying falsified ID cards that were most likely created by Prompto. They were completely undetectable, to the point where they weren’t even flagged for review. It’s extremely unlikely that anyone but a Turk would be able to create them. _ ”

“ _ There were also override codes used on the security terminals within the Reactor, _ ” the voice continues on before Reno can try to explain the ID cards away, “ _ with numeric patterns consistent with those given to an active Turk. Finally, all street footage from above the plate that would have captured the suspects on film has been corrupted, likely disrupted by a very specific EMP device. I don’t think that I need to remind you what the bulk of Prompto Strife’s assignments in Wutai were? _ ”

“Infiltration and Recon,” Reno sighs, “dammit.”

Because that’s actually a very good case for saying that the first Turk in decades to successfully defect and come out of it alive was involved.

“ _ I was only brought in to do the analysis on the suspects, _ ” the voice says plainly, “ _ I’m not privy to the actual security footage from the bombing, but I would personally wager that Prompto Strife was unaware of the magnitude of damage that AVALANCHE planned to cause. In fact, I would go as far as to say that he intended for the focus to be less on AVALANCHE, and more so on whoever aided them. _ ”

“Oh yeah?” Reno scoffs, “How do ya figure that?”

“ _ Think about it, _ ” is the response, “ _ upon further investigation, it is more than obvious that someone from Shinra with noteworthy security clearance is responsible for getting AVALANCHE through the door. If the bombing did not end up being the spectacle that it was, then surely we would be tasked with finding out who helped them. _ ”

“And there’s only one former Shinra employee with a kill-on-sight on them.” Reno concludes with a sigh.

“ _ Precisely _ ,” the voice says, and Reno can imagine the condescending nod that goes along with it.

“...Why are you telling me this?” the red-head asks eventually, and he begins to walk up to the church himself. He deserves to sit down for a bit. Aerith’s just going to have to deal with the break in routine for today.

“ _ Because it will undoubtedly come up on your radar soon... _ ” is the oddly hesitant-sounding response, “ _...and I- _ ”

“Real fine time to start feelin’ bad, yo.” Reno cuts in dryly, pushing his way into the church. Aerith gives him an odd look from where she is kneeled down in the flower patch near the altar, but the red-head merely gives a lazy wave and immediately drops down into the closest pew to the door. 

There’s silence on the other end of the line for a moment. 

“ _...-I believe a great many things are to be set in motion soon, _ ” Reno hears eventually, “ _ and I also believe that it’s imperative to update you in particular with all the available information _ .”

Reno says nothing, looking around the church impassively as Aerith eventually shrugs and goes back to tending her flowers.

“ _ That is all, _ ” the voice says quietly, “ _ stay vigilant. _ ”

The line cuts then, and Reno pulls his PHS from his ear, staring at it for a moment. Then he heaves what’s probably the biggest sigh he’s ever heaved in his life. It’s enough to get Aerith to look up from her work and give Reno another odd look, but she ultimately decides not to ask after a moment.

Which is good, because Reno has no idea how he would even begin to try and explain his conflicted feelings right now.

“ _ Dammit _ , yo.” The Turk grumbles, thinking of sharp violet eyes and the subtle shuddering of shoulders and a gun pointed shakily at him.

“The hell happened to keepin’ a low profile?”

…

_ Cloud is six years old, and people are  _ not  _ careful enough with Prompto.  _

_ It makes him really,  _ really  _ upset. _

_ Prompto is still soft and squishy, but not as much as he was before. But Prompto is in pain a lot of the time. Their mom tells Cloud that Prompto is sick, and instead of getting better after a few days and some medicine, he’s going to stay sick. And being sick makes Prompto hurt, sometimes badly enough that he can’t walk. _

_ Cloud thinks that it’s not fair. He can walk just fine, his mom can walk just fine. _

_ (His Dad walked well enough to walk away and never come back.) _

_ So it’s not fair that Prompto can only walk sometimes, and even then he needs a bit of help to do so. And Prompto doesn’t talk very much, even though he’s super smart and good at it, but Cloud knows that it makes him sad. _

_ So when the other kids pick on Prompto, it makes Cloud super mad. _

_ Mad enough that he starts pushing and hitting the other kids whenever they make his little brother more upset than he always is. They push and hit back sometimes, but Cloud is not as soft and squishy as Prompto is, and doesn’t let that stop him.  _

_ People in town start to be mean to his mother because of it though, they say that she should be able to control Cloud more. Cloud apologizes for being trouble, but refuses to stop hitting the other kids when his mother asks him too. Because he knows it makes his mom sad too, when the other kids are mean to Prompto and she isn’t around to stop them. And his mom can’t hit the other kids, that’s something that Cloud has learned is very, very bad when a woman from their town got taken away last year for doing just that to some of the school kids. _

_ So Cloud protects Prompto for him and for his mom. _

_ Prompto eventually says that he doesn’t want Cloud to keep getting in trouble, so Cloud stops hitting and pushing the other kids when he knows that Prompto can see. But he pays attention. He knows when the other kids are mean to Prompto and he remembers it for later. _

_ It’s not really that fun to have to hit and push all the time, but Cloud already knows at six years old that he’ll do it for the rest of his life if he has to. _

_ Prompto gets over his sickness a few years later, and Cloud stops having to. _

_ But that doesn’t mean that he stops being ready to start again if need be. _

…

“Dude,” the kid does not sound happy, “what the  _ hell  _ was that!?”

Barret turns his head and is unsurprised to see Prompto standing there, glaring at him.

He hadn’t heard the kid approach, or even seen any sign that he wasn’t alone in the Train Graveyard, but Barret’s come to accept the fact that Prompto is only heard when he wants to be heard.

It’s something that he has in common with his annoying-ass older brother, the man realizes. 

“What was what?” Barret asks simply, turning and crossing his arms. The kid’s (and goddamn, he’s _ nineteen years old _ according to Biggs, he really is a fucking kid) eyes narrow dangerously, and not for the first time, Barret is reminded that Prompto isn’t one to be taken lightly. 

“Really dude?” the blond huffs, “We’re really gonna play it like that?”

Prompto’s eyes are burning, Barret realizes. And even though the sun’s still high in the sky, he could  _ swear  _ that there’s an otherworldly glow to them as well.

“You know what it was,” is what the man says in response, shrugging his shoulders. “You saw it, didn’t ya?” Barret questions, “Must be why you’re here with me instead of going to the bar to find your brother.”

It’s an admittedly cruel way of picking at the kid, but Barret doesn’t appreciate Prompto’s approach. There’s a moment when something painful and young-looking passes over the kid’s face, but it’s immediately wiped away by an impressive scowl. 

_ Got that in common with your bro too _ , Barret thinks.

“How did sabotaging a mako pump turn into comprising the structure of an entire Sector Plate?” Prompto demands, “What the hell did you guys do!? Put ten different bombs down?”

Barret sighs, “Look, kid-”

“But then again,” Prompto rants, “that wouldn’t have caused an explosion that big either! Did you guys pick up a blasting agent twenty times stronger than the one I showed you guys? You said that they didn’t need help getting it from a supply factory!”

“You’d have to talk to Jessie about that,” is all Barret says in response, “I left those details to them.”

“Barret!” The kid says incredulously, gesturing with his hands wildly. “How are you being nonchalant about this?” Prompto demands, “Have you seen the death count? Heard the rebuild budget estimate? Every single person on duty in the Reactor that night is dead, man! Right down to the frickin’ janitors!”

Barret swallows heavily, but doesn’t say anything. Which, he doesn’t need to. Because Prompto’s not done yet.

“Not to mention all the civilians injured or killed because the blast spread to the surrounding buildings and throughout the entire Sector basically!” Prompto says shrilly, “ _ Dude _ . That’s not what was supposed to happen! That’s not what our agreement was!”

“You think I don’t know that!?” Barret snaps back finally, “It’s not like I can tell you what went wrong there! I ain’t make the damn bomb! All I can tell you is that it happened. Wasn’t supposed to, but the shit happened, and we gotta move on.”

“ _Move_ _on_?” Prompto says, eyes wide. “Barret,” the kid snaps, “there’s no moving on from that! People are saying that you guys were acting in the name of Wutai!”

Barret growls under his breath. 

He’s heard that rumor being passed around too, as if AVALANCHE is just this group of freaks with no fucking principles or minds of their own. If there’s one thing that Barret didn’t want to come from their mission last night, then it’s damn sure this narrative that AVALANCHE is in bed with a country that they were just at War with a few years ago. It completely muddles the message that they were looking to send and it’s dangerous. There’s no doubt in his mind that a bunch of disturbed individuals will use the event to start warmongering and crap like that. 

So yeah, that part sucks. But Barret chooses to focus on something else.

“It ain’t how we wanted to do it,” the man states, “but we’re damn sure that Shinra’s gonna be taking us seriously from now on.”

At this, Prompto’s eyes turn almost panicked, and Barret feels the first makings of guilt start to pool in his stomach. 

“ _ Barret _ ,” Prompto says, this time almost desperately. “You don’t  _ want  _ Shinra to take you seriously in this way! Not with the public watching like this! Not with people injured and hurt and calling for retaliation!”

“It’s probably not ideal,” Barret says, “but-”

“Shinra’s going to have to make an example out of you all now,” Prompto cuts in harshly, “and I don’t you realise just how bad that is when you’re located in the city that they control.”

“So they’ll send their goons after us,” Barret huffs, “we’ll take ‘em on, and take ‘em down.”

“It won’t just be you guys though,” the blond says tiredly, looking like the definition of stress (which doesn’t help Barret with any of his faint guilty feelings at all). 

“Hey,” Barret says calmly, “it was our fuck-up, we’ll be ready to take the heat for it. Don’t focus on that too much.”

“Dude,” Prompto shoots him a look of disbelief, “this is on me too, I got you guys in there.”

“And your brother got us through,” Barret says, watching as Prompto stiffens and bites his lip. “Look at you,” he uncrosses his arms to gesture at the kid, “all worked up and stressed out over something that you ain’t have no direct part in. You should be askin’ me about your bro right now, and feeling relieved that you don’t gotta try and get in the Shinra building no more, but instead you’re about to get a stomach ulcer before you can even hug your bro again.”

Prompto frowns, opens his mouth. And then he closes it again, before sighing and shaking his head.

“C’mon,” Barret gives a grin, “you know you wanna ask.”

The kid scowls at him slightly and goddamn, does he look almost  _ exactly  _ like his older brother when he does that.

“Cloud’s…ok?” Prompto asks meekly anyway. The only time Barret has heard this kid sound anything but confident in his words is when the topic of his brother comes up.

“He’s fine,” Barret shrugs, “an asshole. But decently smart and damn good in a fight.”

Prompto gives a small smile at that, so Barret continues.

“And don’t even think of telling him this,” he warns, “but we couldn’t have done it without him.”

It’s easy enough to tell that this is something that Prompto is conflicted over. Because there’s a look of admiration and pride on his face that’s a war with the same stressed out look from a few moments ago. 

However, Prompto seems to go through some sort of thought process, because the look on his face quickly becomes confused.

“What do you mean by that?” the kid asks.

“...By what?” Barret questions back, getting confused himself.

“You said that I don’t have to try and infiltrate the Shinra building anymore,” Prompto responds, “but I never told you what I needed to get in there for?”

“Oh.” Barret says dumbly, “We kind of figured it had somethin’ to do with your brother?”

“Oh,” Prompto says in response, before he gets a very solemn smile suddenly that makes Barret immensely uncomfortable. No kid should look that defeated when they smile.

“If only it were that simple,” the kid says softly.

“Why can’t it be?”

“It’s true that part of the reason I was going there was to figure out Cloud’s whereabouts,” Prompto admits, “I was told that he deserted Shinra, and that his location was unknown but he needed to be considered a threat.”

Barret waits, because it seems like the kid has more to say. He’s not disappointed.

“Obviously that was before I left myself,” Prompto continues, “they were sure that he would try to contact me eventually, and I was supposed to bring him in.”

The older man remains quiet. Because though he can’t even imagine being put in that type of situation, he knows that he would tell Shinra to shove it. Barret also wants to be patient with Prompto here, because this is literally the most the kid has said about himself since they’ve met.

“That was a big motivator to leave,” Prompto explains, “but I’d actually planned on staying. I figured that the best way I could make sure he was safe would be to use the resources that I had within the Turks.”

Barret finds himself nodding, because that makes sense.

“I wasn’t going to look for him,” the blond shrugs helplessly, “I’d just come to the conclusion that a ton of shady shit was at play for a really long time, and I didn’t think it would be safe for him if I managed to find him. I was hoping that he’d get to me, and in that time I decided that I would look into the shady shit so I had a better idea of what we were going to have to do when we met up again.”

Here, the boy’s expression becomes haunted.

“I...learned a lot of things that I didn’t know how to connect or make sense of,” Prompto mutters, “but there was something about me that I found out...that I couldn’t let go of.”

“And that’s what made you leave?” Barret guesses.

“Yeah,” the blond nods, “it hit me in the face suddenly that it was  _ way  _ more dangerous for me to stay with Shinra than I’d initially thought. If I didn’t leave soon, then there was a chance that I’d never be able to. And then there’d be no way that I could see Cloud again.”

Barret wants to ask, but he knows better. The shell shocked look on Prompto’s face speaks of horrors that no one should prod at without knowing what they’re doing. He can only hope that Cloud can turn out to be that person for his little brother. 

“So,” Prompto looks up at Barret again at this, “I left.”

“They just let you?” the olde man asks, knowing the answer already. Prompto snorts humorlessly, and his eyes flare up and they’re  _ definitely glowing, holy shit _ .

“My old partner tried to stop me,” he shrugs, “there was no one else really in the position to try. Turks tend to be spread out on assignment, and ours was all the way in Wutai.”

“Hm,” Barret hums thoughtfully. “What’d you do to ‘em?” he asks, morbidly curious because even though Prompto very obviously has the skills to hurt someone, it’s a little difficult to imagine him going for it.

Prompto shrugs.

“What needed to be done,” is all the kid says.

It’s no longer difficult to imagine.

“But my point is,” Prompto barrels on, “yes, I needed to find Cloud. Him being around changes things for sure. But there’s still dots that I need connected if we’re going to be able to truly be done with Shinra and be safe outside of their influence.”

“And to connect those dots,” Barret realizes, “ya still need to get into the building.”

Prompto nods.

“That’s why I’m coming with you guys tomorrow.” 

“What?” Barret’s eyes widen behind his sunglasses, “No you ain’t! You literally said that you can’t be seen workin’ with us!”

“Yeah well,” Prompto scowls, “things change when you wreck an entire Sector.”

“C’mon kid,” Barret huffs, “I wasn’t even gonna let your bro come on the next mission cause Tifa’s gonna be coming! Don’t you want to take that time to catch up?”

“That’s good,” Prompto ignores his question, “if Cloud’s not going to join AVALANCHE, and he damn sure  _ shouldn’t _ , then he doesn’t need to be seen working with you guys all that often either.”

“And what about you!?”

“I’m going to make sure that nothing like last night happens again,” Prompto crosses his own arms, face determined. “I’m gonna check out Jessie’s bomb personally this time, and I’m gonna make sure you guys set and activate right.”

“We ain’t goddamn children, you know.” Barret snaps.

“And you’ll need the extra help anyway,” Prompto ignores him  _ again _ , “Tifa said you left a message for Shinra saying that you’d hit another Reactor, and the public is watching now. This’ll fuck up my anynmonity, but I can’t let you guys go in there with stakes so much higher, knowing that I can for sure make it easier on you.”

“And what about Cloud?” Barret demands. It doesn’t seem to have the intended effect of making Prompto rethink his plan.

“You shouldn’t hire him for this job,” Prompto nods, “but you should stay in contact with him afterwards anyway. Shinra will retaliate eventually, and I have no idea how, but it won’t hurt for you guys to have the extra muscle.”

“You say that like you’re sure that your bro will be interested,” Barret huffs, “but like I said earlier, he’s an  _ asshole _ . Don’t even get how you’re both related.”

Prompto’s smiling fondly at this, and the older man figures that it’s nothing but a brother’s love at work.

“Still not a people person, huh?” the kid says fondly, and yeah. That’s some brotherly bond there, because Prompto literally just looks amused.

And then sad.

“I miss him,” the kid says softly.

Shit.

“Yeah, well.” Barret looks away because goddamn had Prompto mastered the kicked-puppy face. “He’s out doin’ merc stuff with Tifa right now,” he explains, “but she said she’d bring him back around the bar around sunset.” 

Prompto looks so hopeful and so overwhelmed at this that Barret has to turn his body away and start walking again.

“I gotta go find the parts I need,” he says over his shoulder, “no one’s in the bar right now, but if you come around sunset, the doors’ll be unlocked.”

Prompto’s response is quiet enough that Barret barely hears it.

“Ok.”

Barret continues to walk, determined to finish all his errands today with time to spare.

Ain’t no way in hell that he’s missing this reunion.

…

_ “Uh,” Prompto’s face is adorably confused, but he’s smiling nonetheless. “I appreciate it dude, but you know that my birthday’s not for almost two months?” _

_ Cloud rolls his eyes, shoving the chocolate cake with the words “Happy Birthday Prompto!” drawn messily on in closer to Prompto’s chest.  _

_ “Of course I know that,” he says, “but when October 25th rolls around, you’ll be in fucking Wutai,” and he shrugs sheepishly, cheeks heating as his little brother’s smile grows into a full-blown grin. _

_ “Aw dude!” Prompto says happily, finally taking the cake into his hands. “That’s so nice!” _

_ “Yeah, well,” is all that Cloud says, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. He’s glad that he had the foresight to do this when he knew that Prompto’s bunkmates would be out on patrol. It’s always embarrassing to have his younger brother look at him with stars in his eyes like he’s doing right now. Especially considering that Prompto’s never seemed to feel the same level of embarrassment and will indiscriminately fawn over Cloud no matter who’s around to see it.  _

_ “Really,” Prompto’s voice goes uncharacteristically soft, and Cloud’s head shoots up. “This is really awesome.” _

_ Cloud’s horrified to see his little brother’s eyes begin to fill in with tears. _

_ “I was actually kinda bummed when they told me I have to leave the first week of September,” Prompto sniffles, “but this makes it better. Still sucks that I have to turn fourteen without you around, but this is so cool.” _

_ “Careful,” Cloud warns, stepping up to his brother to rub his arms. “You’re supposed to be turning seventeen, remember?”  _

_ Prompto snorts, “you know that no one actually believes I’m sixteen, right? Just like they don’t believe that you’re eighteen?” _

_ “Of course not,” Cloud sighs, reaching up to pinch his brother’s cheek. “Not with all this baby fat,” he ignores Prompto’s whine, “but if they’re going to just ignore it, then there’s no reason to bring attention to it.” _

_ “Reno definitely knows,” Prompto pulls away and moves to set the cake down on his nightstand, “he literally said ‘Yo, you’re just as scrappy as I was when I was thirteen’ and then he pushed me out of a helicopter.” _

_ “Don’t remind me of that,” Cloud mutters, fighting back the protective rage that always bubbles up whenever Prompto talks about his ‘training’ with Reno.  _

_ “I had a parachute,” Prompto defends, because for some indescribable reason, he actually  _ likes  _ the fiery-haired Turk. To the point that Cloud’s actually half-afraid that his little brother will come back from Wutai with red hair himself.  _

_ The idea that Prompto’s going to be in the care of Reno of all the possible Turks gives Cloud no small amount of anxiety. It’s a constant war within him to decide whether he’s afraid and skeptical of what Prompto is getting himself into by joining the ranks of the Turks, or if he’s insanely proud of the fact that his little brother is being accepted into the Turks in the first place. Because on one hand, Prompto has always been softer on the inside than Cloud himself, and he’s worried that his little brother won’t be able to handle what’s asked of him as a Turk. On the other hand, being a Turk is significantly safer than being a SOLDIER, statistically speaking, and the fact that they’re setting Prompto up to be an analyst of sorts is great for his little brother’s technically inclined brain.  _

_ Cloud flip flops between the two feelings on a regular basis. But no matter what he’s feeling about Prompto becoming a Turk on any given day, it’s always accompanied by a deep sort of sadness when he remembers that Shinra is shipping his little brother off to complete assignments in Wutai of all places for an indefinite amount of time. It’s embarrassing to admit, but Cloud honestly doesn’t know what he’s going to do without his little brother around on a regular basis. He’d been so angry at the kid for following him to Midgar and enlisting at first, but his brother’s stubborn dedication had worn down Cloud’s ire soon enough and Prompto had quickly become his rock during his time here at Shinra.  _

_ Cloud can still recall the heartbreak and rage that he’d felt when his little brother’s had gone missing along with his team on one of their scouting missions late last year. The dark spiral he’d fallen into for months before Prompto had been found with no recollection of what had happened to him but suddenly being scouted by the Turks. Cloud had been skeptical, and so had Prompto, but they’d both been too relieved at being reunited to really question it. And the interest from the Turks had seemed legit, so they’d both figured that if there was any place in Shinra that Prompto would be able to both thrive and look into the incident he couldn’t remember, it’d be with Shinra’s elite organization of spies.  _

_ They just weren’t expecting the Turks to post Prompto in  _ Wutai _. _

_ Cloud sighs heavily, pulling out a plastic knife from his bag and going to slice his brother’s cake as Prompto goes into a detailed explanation of his most recent training mission with Reno and his quiet partner Rude.  _

_ It’s not like Prompto is the only one that Cloud interacts with here. He has a few friends in the infantry, he likes his three bunkmates well enough, he has Zack and by extension Kunsel, and even a Turk that he’d gone on a mission with not too long ago that he occasionally swaps emails with. But they’re not Prompto. _

_ Prompto, who he can slip into Nibel with at any point in time and receive a response in the same comforting language. Prompto, who can read his mood instinctively and knows the best way to approach him just as easily. Prompto, who Cloud is supposed to protect and care for, who holds his older brother in such a high regard that he’ll light up even when Cloud does something as miniscule as save him a seat in the cafeteria.  _

_ “And then Reno was all ‘aw hell no, yo! You just met Rude so you can’t possibly be listenin’ to him more than ya listen ta me!’, Cloud you should have seen it! He was soooo pouty!” _

_ Cloud smiles ruefully. _

_ “And apparently they chose a partner for me already, something Scientia, I think? It was a real weird name.” _

_ Gaia, he’s going to  _ miss  _ him _

…

“...Cloud?”

The voice is soft, almost hesitant. In fact, if it were any other voice, Cloud might actually have trouble discerning the word even with his enhanced hearing. As it stands now though, there’s no way in hell that Cloud could not hone in on that voice. It cuts through his mind and sears down his chest in an ache and settles like a rock in his stomach. The ex-Soldier is near ashamed to feel a rising heat behind his eyes, and he hasn’t even turned around yet. 

“Is that…” a heavy swallow, “is that really you, Cloud?”

Aware of Tifa and all of AVALANCHE’s eyes locked onto him, Cloud takes a deep breath and slowly turns on the bar stool to look at the new arrival.

Hair the exact same shade of blonde as his own, even falling about in a comparable spiky pattern in the front. A face that looks like Cloud himself in the mirror a few years ago. The eyes are new, more violet in color than the last time Cloud remembers seeing them (and  _ Gods _ , it’s really been  _ years _ ). Shoulders a little more broad, arms more defined. Still relatively lanky and thin though. He’s wearing a simple white tank and some blue jeans that are ripped at the knee. A backpack is thrown over one of his shoulders, but it quickly falls to the floor of the bar as he looks back at Cloud with wide eyes.

“Prompto,” the ex-Soldier breathes. 

His little brother continues to stare at him in disbelief, before Prompto’s face screws up and a quiet noise escapes him.

“Aw man,” Prompto’s voice wobbles as he goes to cover his face with a hand. 

Cloud’s up and across the room before he even thinks about it.

There’s a sound that’s probably Jessie gasping as Cloud takes Prompto into his arms, squeezing him tightly. And then a sound that’s definitely Biggs shushing Wedge as Prompto hugs back just as hard, pressing his wet face into Cloud’s shoulder. Cloud ignores them, cradling his brother’s head as something inside him settles and a weight he didn’t even notice is lifted off his shoulders. 

It’s all worth it suddenly. The Reactor, the go around with Barret for his pay, the glorified chores he’d had to do around town today. Cloud would do it all again and more in a heartbeat if it meant that he’d be able to keep Prompto safely here with him. 

“Gaia,” Cloud murmurs into his little brother’s hair, “I’ve missed you.”

Prompto merely squeezes him tighter in response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact, when I decided to take on this idea fully, I wrote three separate scenes for it in advance before I even outlined it lol. The bar reunion scene in the end is one of them. 
> 
> Again, apologies for not too much happening here, but we'll really get in the nitty gritty of the plot next starting with the next chapter because hurray! Our boys are united! This chapter definitely set up some foundations for some plot threads, and I'm excited to keep going.
> 
> Full disclosure guys, I ADORE Reno. Like completely unrepentant, he's in my top five characters in the FFVII universe. And I love the hints of nuance that the remake gave to him and Rude in the small segments that we got to see them. It's all the way lovely, they're badass and complex and I love them, so expect to see them. I noticed that Reno hints when he and Cloud first meet that his job is also to protect Aerith, so I kind of ran with that because I also love the idea of Aerith having this understanding with Reno and Rude that they're forced to interact so the may as well get along while they do.
> 
> Anyways, this chapter was like, 60% done already by the time I posted the chapter before this, which is why it's out so fast. I cannot promise this in the future unfortunately T.T But regardless of that fact, I hope everyone enjoyed and is remaining Happy and Healthy and I'll see y'all in the next one!
> 
> {Spoiler Warning} I know that I essentially give it away in the chapter, but bonus points for whoever clues in to who Reno was talking to on the phone! {Spoiler Warning}


	4. III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s not much Cloud can say to deny that, so he leans himself against the wall too and stares at Prompto instead.
> 
> “And where are you staying?”
> 
> “A place kind of like this in the Sector 3 Undercity,” Prompto responds. Cloud swallows, throat a bit dry.
> 
> “And that’s where you’ll keep staying?” he asks quietly.
> 
> Prompto’s expression goes thoughtful for a moment, before he looks directly back at Cloud, something a little vulnerable in his gaze.
> 
> “I...dunno.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! I do hope everyone is staying happy and healthy! Welcome back!
> 
> I'd just like to take a moment to thank the lovely Happy-Orc for feeling inspired enough by this fic to create art for it! And to share it. They're really very lovely pieces and they give me life! They also have more lovely art on their blog.
> 
> See them here:  
> https://happy-orc.tumblr.com/post/617395893925249024/a-picture-of-cloud-and-prompto-as-kids-from  
> https://happy-orc.tumblr.com/post/617924290388590592/ff15ff7-crossovers-are-my-jam-prompto-and-ignis
> 
> Without further ado, please enjoy!

_ With time and hindsight, Cloud will eventually come to the conclusion that he really, really should have expected Prompto to pull something like this.  _

_ Right now though? As he looks at his thirteen year-old brother smile sheepishly -cheeks still full with baby fat- with his cadet uniform in his arms, Cloud kind of wants to scream.  _

_ “What-!” Prompto’s flinch and the way his voice punches out of his mouth into the thankfully empty hallway is what stops Cloud short from actually screaming. The teen closes his eyes and breathes out heavily, shaking his head and wondering just how the hell his little brother managed to get past the recruiters while looking like the middle schooler he should actually be. _

_ (Cloud knows how though, he’d be dishonest with himself if he acts like he doesn’t. The War with Wutai is brutal, and has been brutal for a long time. Coupled with the fact that there’s some disillusionment rising outside of the walls of Midgar and down in the slums regarding Shinra’s participation in the War, then it’s obvious to anyone that the military is hurting for men something terrible.) _

_ “What are you doing, Prom?” Cloud asks, calmer this time. He opens his eyes to stare at his little brother just in time to see Prompto shrug almost helpless. _

_ “Think that the better question is ‘what have you done?’” Prompto says wryly. _

_ Cloud crosses his arms, unamused. _

_ “And the answer to that is, well…” Prompto forces his smile a little wider, “I...joined the infantry as a cadet. I have evaluations starting next week, then I get a class and basic training schedule.” _

_ “Prompto,” Cloud groans, “Why?” _

_ “Could kinda ask you the same thing, dude.” _

_ “We talked about this though!” Cloud retorts, throwing his arms up. “You said you understood!” _

_ “Yeah. Well.” Prompto shrugs again, “I lied.” _

_ “Seriously!?” _

_ “You said that would come back after becoming a hero like Sephiroth,” Prompto says quietly, “it bothered me. But I didn’t realize why until after you were gone for a month already and I started looking back over all those newspaper clippings you had.” _

_ “Prompto!” Cloud huffs, cheeks flushing as he thinks about the embarrassing box hidden underneath his bed that he specifically told his little brother not to touch. _

_ “I realized that something wasn’t looking good about the dates and stuff,” Prompto goes on as though he’s said nothing, “they were all so close, and there’s been mention of Sephiroth and SOLDIERs in the papers for years, Cloud.” _

_ “What’s your point?” Cloud asks, looking around and finding himself thankful that this hallway is remaining untouched by the people still in the building at this time of night. _

_ “You said you’d be back after becoming a hero like Sephiroth,” Prompto repeats, looking directly into Cloud’s eyes. Ocean-blue to Sky-blue. “But if you become a hero like Sephiroth, Cloud.” he shrugs again, “I don’t think I believe that Shinra would let you come back.” _

_ Cloud’s speechless. _

_ “So,” Prompto gestures with his uniform, “I’m here to watch your back. Man! It’s gonna be so awesome! The Strife duo, dynamic bros!” _

_ His brother devolves into excitedly planning all the things that they’re going to have to try in the city together once their leave time starts overlapping. Cloud wants to press him more, grill him for details as to how he managed to make the not-easy trip from Nibelheim all the way to Midgar by himself with only their mom’s antique revolver for protection. He wants to say a lot of things, ask a lot of things. _

_ But something about Prompto’s words and the way he said them makes Cloud feel extremely uncomfortable, and he’s not quite sure why. But if he had to guess, then Cloud would wager that the odd sense of...foreboding in his brother’s tone has gotten to him. Prompto had sounded so sure, and so resigned to give himself over to the same fate. It’s...not a nice thought. _

_ “-Mom flipped her lid about it of course, but I think that she secretly wanted us both to stick together anyway. And it was easier to sell her on it when I reminded her that is was basically a free way to get up through a college-level education and you’d definitely look out for me and I’m more consistent with writing letters anyway and-” _

_ Cloud will just have to make sure he proves Prompto wrong about that then, for the both of them. _

_ “-but that recruiter lady was actually like, super sketch. I don’t think I liked her very much-” _

_ After all, he has more than a few promises to keep. _

…

His memories of getting out and away from Shinra are vague and hazy, and he’s not too sure why he was out of Midgar when it happened to begin with, but one thing Cloud is sure of is having to cut his own path through infantry soldiers and having to slip into the city undetected.

( _ There’s also the vague impression of glass walls to tight and to close and burning fluid filling his mouth and lungs and wrongness, wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong- _

…

…

But trying to think too hard on those impressions takes his already painful migraines from distracting to debilitating, so Cloud studiously avoids that segment of his mind.)

Prompto had been right, all those years ago.

It’s a tough pill to swallow, especially when Cloud remembers that his little brother being right applied to Prompto as well. And that means that Prompto would have had to force his own way out as well. Without Cloud there to protect him.

His chest aches when he thinks of this, so Cloud forces the thoughts back and away and focuses on how strong his little brother’s grip is.

“Oh. My.  _ God _ .” Cloud vaguely hears Jessie squeal quietly when he pulls back slightly to look at his brother.

Prompto’s doing much the same, teary eyes taking in Cloud’s face sharply. 

The subtle violet tint to his eyes that had been present when Prompto had returned after being missing all those years ago has gotten even more apparent. Cloud can just barely perceive the more solid shade of blue beneath the glow. It’s much like his own mako eyes, but still different in a way that’s significant yet unplaceable. Cloud’s not sure if he’s ever met any Turks up close in person before, but he does have vague knowledge of them getting treated with very slight mako injections to give them an edge in combat. Nowhere near the level of a SOLDIER, but definitely enough that a particularly skilled Turk could have a SOLDIER flat on their back in no time.

“Holy shit, man.” Prompto murmurs, and his voice has matured. It’s definitely fuller and slightly deeper, and carries with a presence that only comes with confidence. Yet it still has a youthful lilt to it that Cloud wishes he himself could get rid of already. He briefly wonders if Prompto’s singing voice is still as good as it used to be.

“Holy shit.” Cloud agrees. “I-” he cuts himself off.

Cloud wants to ask so much, wants to say so much. How is Prompto feeling? Where has he been? Is he staying somewhere safe? How was life in Wutai? When did he leave Wutai? 

“Dude,” Prompto sniffles and shakes his head, “I can’t believe you’re here.”

Is he eating right? Is he still on the healthy food kick he’d picked up not too long after he’d arrived in Midgar? Has he eaten today yet? Does he still like green curry soup? 

“Likewise,” is all Cloud can say, pushing away slightly but leaving his hands on Prompto’s shoulders so he can look over his brother’s body for anything amiss.

Why did he leave Shinra? Does he know anything about Cloud’s missing time? What does he plan to achieve by helping AVALANCHE? Will he still feel the need to now that they’ve found each other?

“You pierced one of your ears,” Prompto points out quietly. And then he huffs out a wet-sounding laugh, “Edgelord.”

“You have like, five piercings in your ears.” Cloud notices, counting two studs and a hoop spaced apart in his brother’s right ear lobe, and two more studs in the left. “And I’m the Edgelord?”

“Guess it’s just in our DNA,” Prompto grins, and something just rights itself in Cloud’s existence. 

He smiles back.

“It’s good to see you, Prom.” 

Prompto opens his mouth to respond, but both of their attention is drawn away by a loud sniffle and a quiet “Oh,  _ man… _ ”

They turn in unison to look over at the table that Jessie, Biggs and Wedge are sitting at. Just in time to see Biggs punch Wedge in the shoulder and hear the man hiss something about “ruining the moment”.

“I can’t help it, bro!” Wedge mutters back, wiping at his eyes. “It’s too touching!”

Cloud is horrified to feel heat rising up to his own cheeks. 

Jessie is outright staring at them, eyes wide with wonder and jaw hanging open. It’s hard to say what the expression on her face means, but Cloud already knows that she’s never gonna let this go.

“Hmph,” he hears from behind, “guess they really are brothers.”

Cloud looks over his shoulder to see Barret studiously looking away. The man’s voice was as gruff as ever, but the ex-SOLDIER is almost positive that he catches Barret bringing his hand down from his face. 

A glance at Tifa shows the woman smiling softly, eyes warm and wet. 

“ _Thank_ _you_ ,” Cloud mouths impulsively. Because honestly, if it wasn’t for Tifa’s intervention and bringing him and Prompto to AVALANCHE, then there’s a chance that they wouldn’t have been able to have this.

Tifa seems surprised at the display, but quickly recovers and mouths “ _ Anytime _ .”

“Anyways,” Barret says after clearing his throat and shaking his head a little bit, “Y’all two should go on and catch up, daylight’s burning away and if you’re still gonna come with us tomorrow kid, you should rest up.”

Cloud resists the urge to scowl at that, unhappy with the reminder that Prompto’s plan is to accompany AVALANCHE on their next bombing trip tomorrow.

“Right…” Prompto mutters in response to Barret.

It’s not as though he doubts his little brother’s skills and capabilities, far from it actually. Prompto did well in Shinra for a reason, and if everything Cloud’s heard so far is to be believed, then Prompto’s only kept his upwards momentum since they’ve last seen each other.

He doesn’t even doubt AVALANCHE’s capabilities. They proved the night before that with proper prep and a little determination, that they can adapt to situations well enough. They’d needed Cloud for muscle mainly, but they certainly won’t be lacking that with Barret and Tifa there, not to mention that there’s no way that Prompto can’t hold his own after years with the Turks. So in all honesty, barring them setting off another bomb that’s way bigger than they were prepared for, there’s no real reason to worry that they won’t be able to pull it off and come out of it alive and well.

_ But _ , Cloud thinks as he turns his head to stare at Prompto again, _ I’m just seeing him again after so long. _

The idea of Prompto going off to do something dangerous without Cloud again... _ hurts _ .

“Hey,” a hand waves in his face, and Cloud refocuses to see Prompto giving him a concerned look. “You ok there dude?” his brother asks, “That was some pretty impressive spacing out there.”

“Yeah,” Cloud breathes, “‘s just...a lot to take in.”

Prompto hasn’t stopped giving him that vague look of disbelief, so he’s certain that his brother knows the feeling. 

“Dude,” Prompto says suddenly, eyes wide. “Let’s go kill some monsters!”

Cloud blinks.

“This is perfect!” his little brother says excitedly, “I was supposed to go pick something up from the factory. You can come with me and show off your sword skills!”

Prompto walks around to get a better look at the weapon.

“That’s pretty badass, Cloud!” he says thoughtfully, “I was just at the junk shop seeing if they had what I needed, and he told me all about the blonde merc with a big-ass sword that helped him. Getting yourself a rep already, huh?”

“Not going too badly I guess,” Cloud responds, crossing his arms and looking at his brother amusedly. “What’re you carrying nowadays? The Turks let you play with machines like you wanted them too?”

“Aw man, you have no idea!” Prompto grins, and it really is just the nicest sight that Cloud can remember seeing in years. “Let’s go, let’s go!” the younger says, moving to pull Cloud along by his arm, “We’ll go kill some besties, collect some junk, and when we come out of it alive, then we’ll celebrate by eatin’ something dead!”

“Feral-ass kid…” Cloud hears Barret mutter as his brother tugs him away and out of the bar, only briefly stopping to retrieve his fallen backpack. The of AVALANCHE and Tifa immediately burst into loud conversation the moment the doors swing closed behind them, and the ex-SOLDIER finds himself sighing.

“You picked a fine group to ally yourself with, Prompto.” Cloud says in exasperation.

“Aw, don’t be like that,” comes his brother’s amused response, “give ‘em some time, I’m sure you’ll warm up to them.”

Cloud merely hums in response as Prompto finally lets him go and turns to look at him again. The setting sun only emphasizes the subtle glow in his brother’s eyes. He swallows heavily, there’s so much to talk about, just the thought of it is overwhelming.

“This is...so surreal,” Prompto mutters quietly, “you made it, huh?”

“Made it?”

“Into SOLDIER,” Prompto clarifies, “the mako glow in your eyes is  _ intense _ , man. First Class?”

“Yeah,” Cloud responds automatically. And then he holds back a wince as another one of those damn headaches starts to make itself known at the base of his skull. “I’m no hero though.” he says to distract himself, “so saying that I ‘made it’ may not be the most accurate.”

“Jury’s still out on the hero thing,” Prompto smiles solemnly, “you left, so that’s a pretty big point in your favor.”

“I guess,” Cloud shrugs, trying to ignore the dizziness that begins to rise with his headache getting worse as the seconds pass.

“And besides,” Prompto grin becomes more genuine, “You keep going around and finding cats for little kids, I’m sure you’ll be a hero to a bunch of people down here.”

The headache recedes immediately. But they tend to do that often, so Cloud’s able to just roll with the brief disorientation.

“How did you  _ already  _ hear about that?” he asks incredulously.

“People in the slums talk, dude.” Prompto shrugs, “not like they have much else they can do in the downtime. You’re new, shiny,  _ and  _ ex-Shinra to boot. You’re already well on your way to becoming a mini-celebrity around here.”

“People really have nothing better to do?” Cloud groans. It’ll be good for business, being talked about like that, but it’s still annoying as hell.

“ _ Nope _ ,” Prompto pops his “p” delightedly, before starting down the stairs of the bar. Cloud follows on instinct. “Now let’s get a move on,” he moves in the direction that Cloud remembers going with Tifa just earlier that day, “I definitely came down here pretty impulsively, so I’ll have to go back to Sector 3 sometime between now and when we leave tomorrow to grab some stuff.”

“Sounds like you’ve been busy,” Cloud muses, “You takin’ care of yourself in between all this running around?”

“As best as I can,” Prompto says cheerfully, “it’s...weird. Being back in Midgar after such a long time, ya’know?”

“I do,” Cloud responds quietly. His memories of Midgar outside of the barracks, dorms and Shinra building are sparse at best and non-existent at worst. In fact, it wasn’t until today that Cloud realized that he really didn’t know much about life under the plate at all. 

“When did you leave Wutai?” the ex-SOLDIER asks instead of thinking about how new Midgar feels and how uncomfortable that makes him.

“Last year, around the summertime.” Prompto’s strides are relaxed, almost lazy, even though he’d said that he was short on time. However, despite the ease in his posture, Cloud can tell that there’s a sort of...coil-like energy contained in Prompto’s shoulders. He’s not as comfortable as he’s trying to portray, and Cloud has to wonder if it’s because he also isn’t sure how to act right now, or if it’s because of the topic of conversation.

“How’d you end up back in Midgar?” Cloud’s not sure what stops him from asking why Prompto decided to leave, “If you’ve been avoiding being discovered, then I have to believe that you didn’t make it here easily.”

“No kidding,” Prompto chuckles mirthlessly, looking over to give Cloud a wry smile. “Turns out when you get read into most of Shinra’s plans for war with Wutai, they really don’t like to accept a formal letter of resignation.”

Cloud stops just short of following Prompto into the factory he’d gone through with Tifa earlier.

“War with Wutai?” he asks, eyes wide. 

It makes a startling amount of sense, when Cloud thinks about it. The media’s been all over the bombing, and unrest has definitely been sewn into the minds of the public even after less than twenty-four hours. That’s expected, because no way is the President going to let the name of AVALANCHE go un-trashed in order to preserve the name of his company. The Wutai spin was new though.

Cloud’s aware that some sect of AVALANCHE does indeed have a history of working alongside Wutai, but he also remembers it being something that Shinra didn’t want the public knowing about, back when they were actively trying to keep the faith in their military alive and well. AVALANCHE was an eco-terrorist group, through and through, but their actions had to be seen as radical, short-minded, and malicious. They could not be seen as retaliation for Shinra’s presence in Wutai. Eco-terrorism was easy enough to spin as a bunch of tree-huggers gone mad, but an apparent rebellion of oppressed people could be sympathized with. So Cloud remembers Shinra always carefully controlling the narratives of both AVALANCHE and the War, never really letting much weight get thrown behind the idea that they were connected.

That was back before Midgar had reached the technical heights that it currently has though. Back before mako energy had spread down even through the slums to make life easier for the public. Now, AVALANCHE is known as the eco-terrorist organization that destroyed itself from the inside and is now almost completely ineffective. Wutai is known as that sad tourist trap that Shinra broke and now owns. And support for Shinra is at the highest that it’s ever been, finally recovered from the tanking faith that took place during the War. If Shinra wanted to attack Wutai again for no other reason than Wutai started to get on the President’s nerves, then there’d be nothing to stop them except for the way it would make them come off as imperialistic tyrants. 

But if they could tie AVALANCHE back to Wutai again, this time with the context of the bombing last night…

“Shit,” is all Cloud can think to say.

“Yeah, man.” Prompto says solemnly, “Our job in Wutai was basically crowd control after the War ended. Keeping an eye on the population, making sure any resistance groups that popped up didn't get too far, placing people we could control in positions of power to make sure the capital was always under our thumb.”

Prompto’s eyes have gone haunted and disturbed. Not for the first time, Cloud finds himself cursing the gaps in his memory, but this time for the reason that it’s not fair that Prompto has to clearly remember what his hands were in during his time as a Turk and Cloud only has to deal with a vague knowledge of his own actions. 

“But that’s a story for another time,” Prompto gives a fake smile, and Cloud is a little disturbed to see that he’s still so good at it. “For now,” his brother bounces in place a bit, “let’s see what a SOLDIER can do.”

Cloud snorts despite himself, “You  _ know  _ what a SOLDIER can do.”

“Yeah but that’s not the same as  _ seeing  _ it,” Prompto retorts, “we never worked with SOLDIERs after Lazard wasn’t in control and Heidegger took over. He hated the Turks, still probably does.”

Lazard. Director Lazard. Former Director of SOLDIER? Cloud is aware of hazy memories involving the guy. He was a good one, wasted on the likes of Shinra. And now he’s...dead? Trying to pull up memories of the man’s face gives him conflicting images. Did he have blond hair? Or was it white?

Thinking about it makes Cloud’s head hurt and gives him a sharp sting of vertigo, so the ex-SOLDIER stops. 

“You’re probably right about that,” he says in response to Prompto, moving up to stand next to him. “Guess you’re gonna get your chance to see a SOLDIER in action then,” Cloud nudges his brother, “but do I get to see a Turk in action?”

Prompto grins sheepishly and scratches the back of his head.

“It’s really nothing special,” the younger man says, “all I’ve got on me is a handgun and an ice materia.”

“So I get to do all the heavy lifting?” Cloud huffs, but he’s really more amused than anything.

“Dude,” Prompto chuckles, “look at your sword. Heavy lifting is a given.”

There’s not much Cloud can say in response to that, so he merely snorts and shrugs. It’s not like he’s ever wanted Prompto to have to fight in the first place, anyway.

“So what are we looking for?” he asks, looking around the area. He’d torn through this area with Tifa already, so nothing jumps out at them immediately like earlier, but Cloud knows that the nocturnal beasts will start stalking out of the shadowy corners of the factory soon now that the sun is going down. As long as there’s no more Drakes flying around (and there shouldn’t be, because they almost exclusively hunt in the daytime), then he shouldn’t need Prompto’s help at all, really.

“Should be in one of those Shinra-logo boxes,” Prompto hums thoughtfully, “I think that this was meant for pillar maintenance supplies before Shinra relocated all of its storehouses above plate. I found something super cool last week but it’s not safe to use unless I can find a super effective coolant for it.”

“It’s a machine?” Cloud asks easily, eyes already scanning the room that they’re in for the boxes that Prompto’s talking about. He already figures that they’ll probably have to go farther into the factory to find what his brother’s looking for. The wide open storehouses at the front of it likely won’t have fluids or gases like what Prompto needs. They likely need to find an old supply closet towards the back of the complex.

“Yep!”

“And it’s dangerous?” Cloud sighs.

“Of course!”

“I see you haven’t grown out of that,” the elder man mutters, remembering the years that Prompto would take off their mother’s (and later, Cloud’s) life because he just wouldn’t stop tinkering with things. Weapons, tools, machines, there was no way to keep them from Prompto once he could travel on his own more easily.

“More like grown  _ into  _ it,” Prompto says cheerfully, “it’s gonna be  _ so cool _ , Cloud! Just you wait!”

“I bet.” Cloud huffs, but is helpless against smiling as he leads Prompto the same way he and Tifa had traveled earlier in the day. 

They move quietly, allowing silence to settle between them, which serves Cloud just fine because it makes it easier to listen for any disturbances around them as they move. The ex-SOLDIER quickly deduces that all the training Prompto had done with the Turks has definitely stuck, because the only audible sign that his brother is still following is the slight jingle of the zippers on Prompto’s backpack. Cloud can’t hear his breathing like he could hear Barret or Tifa, and it also seems like Prompto’s matching his own footsteps to Cloud’s own, because he can’t hear that either. 

It’s so unlike the energetic and borderline clumsy demeanour Prompto had when they were younger, that Cloud finds himself more than a little perturbed at how they’ve lost so much time. And then Cloud gets frustrated with himself as he realizes that he doesn’t know what to say anymore. He’d been doing okay earlier, and there’s still definitely things that he wants to bring up.

But how does he do that when there’s so much lost between them now?

“So,” Prompto apparently isn’t suffering from the same hesitance to speak, which Cloud is immensely grateful for. “How’d you end up working with Barret and them anyway?”

“Tifa,” and thankfully it’s also something that Cloud can easily answer, “ran into her a few weeks back. She introduced me to Barret, we discussed terms and pay, he watched me fight some monsters once, and it went from there.”

“You and Barret get along?” Prompto asks curiously as they step out of one storehouse to the connected path outside. Cloud takes a moment to examine the rapidly darkening sky first before he answers.

“Probably not.”

“ _ Probably _ not?” Prompto snorts, and Cloud looks over to see his brother grinning. “What’s that mean?”

“I don’t have an opinion of him,” Cloud shrugs in response, “other than the fact that he’s probably too emotional for his own good and maybe in over his head. Don’t think he likes me, though.”

“Eh,” Prompto shrugs as well and Cloud wonders if that’s what he himself looks like doing so, “Barret’s a big softie on the inside.”

“A burned softie is more like it,” he turns and begins walking again, “lotta issues there. Probably all with Shinra too.”

“Yeah,” Prompto’s voice sounds tired as he responds, “that’s pretty common with people who aren’t from Midgar, actually.”

“Barret’s not from Midgar?” Cloud asks, curious despite himself. 

“Don’t think so,” his brother says, “he’s probably lived in Midgar for most of his daughter’s life, and I don’t know where he’s from exactly, but Barret has a way of talking about the people in Midgar that tells me that he definitely didn’t spend most of his life here.”

“Hmm.” Cloud can see what Prompto’s talking about, if he really thinks about it. Barret does have a general air of disdain about him when he talks about Midgar, and it sometimes extends to the people that live here. Not so much the people in the Sector 7 slums or in AVALANCHE’s circle, but definitely about any part of the populace that freely relies on mako energy.

“Jessie’s a topsider,” Prompto goes on, “but I think she’s got some type of personal beef with Shinra. I think Biggs was displaced by the War and ended up in the slums. Wedge may or may not be a Midgar native, but I think that he’s been a minor member of AVALANCHE since before Barret even got involved.”

“Putting those profiling skills to use, huh?” Cloud asks quietly, eyes narrowing as he catches the shadow of something scurrying in a corner not too far from them.

“Well I wasn’t just gonna help them out just on Tifa’s word alone,” Prompto snorts, “nothing against her, but I didn’t know her as well as you did and even still I could tell she seems like she’s not too down to clown with AVALANCHE.”

“Fair,” Cloud concedes, because he’s also noticed Tifa’s discomfort with the bombings. Not that he can blame her.

“Are you gonna keep on working for them?” Prompto’s voice is slightly pinched when he asks this.

“If they pay me too,” he says, “it’s not like I can go out and get a job bussing tables or something.”

“Guess not,” his brother sighs.

“What about you?” there’s two somethings scurrying, now that Cloud is really looking. “You gonna keep working with them?”

“I don’t know,” Prompto murmurs, “I’d like to be able to say no, because I think antagonizing Shinra right now is a shit idea, but…”

“But you need Shinra to be antagonized,” Cloud concludes. “You need information?”

They’re wererats, he’s pretty sure. Damn do those things just not give up.

“I need to make sure it’s safe to wipe my hands of them completely,” his brother answers. Before abruptly asking, “You see those too?”

“Yeah,” Cloud doesn’t bother pressing for more details, more than aware of the fact that his own defection from SOLDIER did not go quickly or smoothly. And there’s a lot more SOLDIERs than there are Turks. Prompto’s going to have a target on his back for a while, so he must be trying to stack the odds in his favor. “I see them,” he focuses on the now, gripping his sword.

“Ugh,” Prompto huffs, “they’re so gross.”

“You used to love animals,” Cloud points out. His little brother gives an indignant squawk from behind him as Cloud places himself in between Prompto and the corner.

“I still do!” Prompto insists, “Wererats do  _ not  _ count as animals, Cloud. They eat children and keep their bones to decorate their burrows to scare off other predators!”

As if responding to Prompto’s insulting them, the two monsters shoot out of their hiding spots and lunge for them. Cloud cleaves one clean in two easily enough, but the remaining one snarls and scuffles out of the way in time to avoid his next attack. It then immediately starts making that shrieking noise that signifies them calling for help.

Cloud lunges forward himself and impales the creature on the tip of his blade, but not before he registers the sounds of claws on the ground rapidly approaching them. It’s with a groan that the ex-SOLDIER takes in the sight of four more wererats hopping out of crevices in the facility.

“Well that’s annoying,” Prompto speaks Cloud’s thoughts aloud, and the elder realizes with a small amount of trepidation that two of them are moving to flank Prompto.

“Look out!” he warns, swinging in a wide arc to catch the other two that have decided on Cloud as a target. He misses one, but feels his sword cut through the flesh of the other. Not enough to kill it, but definitely enough to slow it down.

“Ew.” Prompto regards the two wererats stalking towards him with an expression of distaste, but Cloud picks up no fear in his expression nor his tone (not that he’d really expect it, Prompto is an ex-Turk and these things are little more than a nuisance), so he focuses on blocking the teeth of the uninjured wererat still gunning for him.

Stupidly, the wererat tries again, and this time Cloud is able to get it with the brunt of his attack, lopping its head off with little to no effort. There’s a snarl at his left, and the ex-SOLDIER swiftly redirects the momentum of his swing to pierce through the one he’d hit earlier, ending that one as well. Huffing at the thought of having to clean even  _ more  _ wererat-blood off of his blade today, Cloud repositions himself to look back at Prompto again.

And he’s more than surprised to see the wererats…-hesitating?- to move closer to the man.

They’re definitely snarling, and perfectly poised to attack, but it’s different from the aggressive and rabid posturing that Cloud has gotten used to seeing today. These wererats are holding position, each a few feet away from Prompto, who is looking back and forth between them with a vaguely confused gaze himself.

“What?” Prompto asks, and the wererats visibly startle. “Don’t think I taste good or something? That’s rude.”

The monsters merely hiss and snarl at him, and Prompto frowns. Cloud’s not sure what’s happening here, but he knows that he doesn’t really feel like waiting to find out what’s going to happen.

It’s pathetically easy to kill the last two wererats, as neither one of them takes their attention off of Prompto to attack Cloud, so the ex-SOLDIER merely walks up to each of them and ends them with a single blow.

There’s a moment of silence as Cloud watches Prompto. Watches as the confused frown intensifies before suddenly dropping into a vaguely disturbed expression.

“That was easy,” Cloud doesn’t know what to make of what just happened, so he decides not to bother with it for right now. At the sound of his voice, Prompto perks up.

“I bet it was!” he grins, “Look at you, bro! That sword may as well have been made for you, how are you not struggling to even lift it?”

Cloud merely shrugs, trying to ignore a little tiny voice in his triumphing at the thought of impressing his little brother. 

The sky is dark by now, and the rest of the facility becomes lit only by emergency lights. They don’t linger, moving on quickly. They don’t revisit the topic of AVALANCHE and Shinra anymore as they continue through the buildings. Cloud dispatches a few more wererats before they finally end up at a supply closet that houses the substance that Prompto came for. It’s laughingly easy each time, because none of the rats seem to want to attack Prompto, and while his little brother looks vaguely uncomfortable each time it happens, it’s always easily overtaken by his excitement over Cloud’s battle maneuvers.

(And if Cloud is a little more flashy about how he picks off the wererats, then that’s nobody’s business but his own.)

…

“Ah,” Prompto says around a yawn, “so they put you over here in Marle’s spot.”

He’s been doing a good job of keeping it to himself, but Cloud can tell that Prompto is exhausted. Probably more so now than before after they’d picked up some pretty meaty burgers from a stall near the station (“It has to be meat, dude! Copious amounts of it! Something dead, remember?”). 

It’s unclear to Cloud what Prompto’s daily life is like right now, because they’d never returned to questioning each other about things like that. The ex-SOLDIER thinks that there’s some unspoken thing going on here where they’ve both decided not to push one another too much for details about each other’s life, even though Prompto has to be burning up inside to ask like Cloud is.

What is clear to Cloud though, is that he’d just spent hours with his little brother whom he was at one point afraid he’d never see again and it’s just about the greatest feeling that he’s felt in a long-ass time. 

He doesn’t want to let go of it.

He  _ won’t  _ let go of it. Never again.

“Yeah,” Cloud leans his sword against the wall and starts on removing his gauntlets, “pretty good deal, all things considered.”

“Dude,” his brother says with a small laugh, “you’re totally gonna work for them again.”

Cloud arches an eyebrow and turns to stare at Prompto, who has made himself comfortable sitting casually on the bed.

“What makes you say that?”

“This,” Prompto waves a hand, “this place? This may not seem like much, but this is settling, bud. If you set up shop here, then there’s no way that you won’t find yourself crossing paths with Barret and them.”

There’s not much Cloud can say to deny that, so he leans himself against the wall too and stares at Prompto instead.

“And where are you staying?”

“A place kind of like this in the Sector 3 Undercity,” Prompto responds. Cloud swallows, throat a bit dry.

“And that’s where you’ll keep staying?” he asks quietly.

Prompto’s expression goes thoughtful for a moment, before he looks directly back at Cloud, something a little vulnerable in his gaze.

“I...dunno.” His little brother murmurs, “I was staying so far to keep myself from being seen with AVALANCHE, to be honest. But since I’m going with them tomorrow, it kind of makes that no longer necessary.”

“Why are you going with them, again?”

“To make sure a whole-ass Sector isn’t caught in the crossfires again,” Prompto huffs, “none of those people asked to be in the middle of a firefight, so I want to make sure everything gets done as safely as possible.”

Cloud nods in acknowledgement.

“I’m also curious to see what Shinra will do,” the younger man goes on, “I kind of have a bad feeling about all of this, like something shady’s going down and we’re missing it.”

Prompto then shakes his head.

“I can’t let them become scapegoats for Shinra, Cloud.” Prompto says, “Especially because I’m the one that got them in there in the first place, even more especially because Shinra’s going to use their actions as an opportunity to warmonger. I gotta help them, at least as much as I can.”

“We.” Cloud corrects.

“Huh?”

“ _ We _ can’t let them become scapegoats for Shinra,” he kicks off of the wall and walks casually over to the adjoined bathroom, “sounds like you’ve made up your mind to work with them for the time being, Prom. That means you’ve made up mine too.”

“Cloud…” Prompto sounds awestruck, “you know you don’t have to-”

“You got them in, I got them through.” Cloud cuts in as he stares at the tiny stall that could in some ways be called a shower. “Since we’re both responsible for helping them fuck with Shinra, knowing how Shinra can be, then there’s no reason why both of us shouldn’t take some responsibility for it.”

“Dude…”

“So you help them out tomorrow,” the ex-SOLDIER says with a confidence he’s not sure he actually feels, “and I’ll make myself available to help them out in the future too. We’ll figure it out, and get that information you need while we’re at it.”

Prompto doesn’t respond, but something in Cloud’s chest pushes him to keep talking anyway.

“You…” he hesitates, “...you should see about staying closer.”

Silence.

“You know…” Cloud absentmindedly fiddles with the faucet, “since you won’t really need to stay away anymore.”

More silence. 

And then.

“ _ Dude _ ,” Prompto lets out a suspiciously wet sounding chuckle, “you’re such a sap.”

Cloud snorts, relief quickly taking place of the rising anxiety he’d been feeling.

“Barret’s not the only softie here,” Prompto sniffles.

“Says the one currently crying right now,” Cloud teases.

“I’m a sensitive guy, ok!?”

“Tch,” the elder scoffs lightly, “I’m gonna shower.”

“Yeah, you should. You smell like rat guts.”

“Whiny.”

“Brute.”

The water gets lukewarm at it’s very best, and the pressure is trash, but Cloud still feels significantly better around fifteen minutes later. Especially when he’s toweling off his hair and finds Prompto passed out on the bed, sleeping silently.

Cloud smiles, dressing quickly and resigning himself to a night sleeping propped against the wall where he can have Prompto constantly in his line of sight.

(And then Jessie comes by and asks him to do a personal job for her. It’s on the tip of Cloud’s tongue to refuse, but the conversation with Prompto replays in his head as she presents the summoning materia to him as payment and with a glance to make sure his little brother is still sleeping peacefully, he agrees.)

(Roches is insane, but not a bad time to fight. Fighting the other SOLDIER fulfills all the inner daredevil tendencies that Cloud won’t admit that he has. 

Biggs proves his steady competence again and also turns out to be surprisingly easy to talk to. Wedge is...a character. And he has terrible taste in pets. But he’s reliable and surprisingly brave and Cloud can see where Prompto would get the idea that he’s got experience. Jessie’s clingy and playful and Cloud’s not sure what she wants from him, especially considering he’s been doing his best to make it clear that he’s not interested. But she’s endearing in an odd way and has a lot of heart under all of the laughter and teasing. Cloud can see her growing on him. Hell she already is.

They all are.

He can understand why Prompto wants to protect them.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, I kind of struggled with this chapter because there was just so much I wanted to do! I want to do all the things! T.T
> 
> But anyways, here we've got the bros hanging out and interacting finally! I've laid out some more context for the AU and I hope that it came through well. I'm aware that some of Prompto's motivations and he may/may not know can come off as confusing, and all I can really say to that is that the fact that we haven't seen anything from his actual perspective yet is purposeful, and we'll get there eventually haha. 
> 
> Anyways, things are about to start happening! It's all very exciting, so please stay tuned for the next update and as always, stay happy and healthy!
> 
> Oh and I have a tumblr @breakthedawn, I don't really use it? In fact, I can't even tell y'all with certainty how long I've had it for, at least a few years? But I may or may not try and start using it more for like writing updates and headcanons and stuff? Maybe, no promises lol. But if you're interested, then that's where I am.


	5. IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “That the boss?” Prompto wonders, and Cloud finally looks over at his brother.
> 
> Cloud turns back to look up at the being, feeling Tifa take place at his other side. 
> 
> “Looks like it,” he answers. It's definitely different from the others in some way.
> 
> “Well,” Prompto says lightly, “guess the first step is to bring him down from there!”
> 
> “We might have to deal with those guys first,” Tifa notes, pointing to a group of six other apparitions that separate themselves from the swarm and start moving down towards them.
> 
> “Boss fights can never be simple,” Prompto groans. Cloud snorts, despite the situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back all! Dawn back at it again with another chapter!
> 
> Now, to begin on a rather serious/somber note, I've been personally struggling with a lot of things going on in the world lately. But writing this fic has allowed me the opportunity to have a reprieve from that every once in awhile, which is something I greatly appreciate fandom for being able to do right now. I would like to keep that way, but I can't in good conscious not at least put it out there that I've posted a link to a bunch of ways to support and help the blm movement on my tumblr @breakthedawn. Support is a powerful thing, so I'd ask that you at least give it a look when you get the chance.
> 
> On a lighter note, there's more fanart! I absolutely adore it! Once again from the lovely Happy-Orc.
> 
> See them here:  
> https://happy-orc.tumblr.com/post/617395893925249024/a-picture-of-cloud-and-prompto-as-kids-from  
> https://happy-orc.tumblr.com/post/617924290388590592/ff15ff7-crossovers-are-my-jam-prompto-and-ignis  
> https://happy-orc.tumblr.com/post/619952985257230336/from-breakthedawns-in-the-beginning-there-was
> 
> There's a bit of violence in this chapter y'all, so do heed the tags! Please enjoy!

After leaving Jessie’s house, it feels only natural to swing past Biggs’ place to make sure that the man has gotten in safely, so that’s what Cloud does. 

Biggs is pacing with a broom outside of his house when Cloud turns the corner.

_ “When he worries, I worry.” _

Cloud sighs to himself and walks over.

“Oh, hey Cloud.” Biggs greets absentmindedly, not stopping in his pacing. Cloud figures that there’s something to Wedge’s worry that Biggs will stay up worrying and overthinking if the clearly stressed expression on his face is anything to go by.

“Hey,” Cloud mutters back awkwardly, wondering what he’s supposed to say to something like this. “Looks like you got back in safely.”

That opens up a wormhole and suddenly Biggs is talking aloud to himself and maybe Cloud (but mostly himself) about his worries and all the things that can go wrong and what he’s going to do if the things do go wrong. It’s almost enough to stress Cloud himself out.

“Biggs,” Cloud cuts in when he can take it no longer.

“What?” Biggs asks, seeming genuinely confused.

“Get some sleep,” the ex-SOLDIER orders, hoping that it’ll be enough to just say that be done with it. He’s not good at stuff like this.

“Wedge sent you?” the other man asks wryly.

“He worries if you worry,” Cloud responds, quoting the other man from earlier. It’s probably best to let Biggs believe that Cloud is on Wedge’s behalf.

“I know,” Biggs sighs, “and I’m trying to get better about that. But even if I stop worrying about the mission tomorrow, HQ running an op tonight has kind of got me spooked, to be honest.”

“And why’s that?” Cloud asks, genuinely curious. Whatever Avalanche HQ that had shown up tonight definitely saved their asses.

“Because they  _ don’t do that _ ,” the man huffs, dragging a hand through his hair. “At least not like that, they don’t!”

“Don’t do what?” Cloud asks with more patience than he thought he was capable of.

“Run ops like that,” Biggs explains, “they’re not that loud, not that demonstrative. They prefer doing behind-the-scenes stuff, playing the long game, y’know?”

“So it’s not normal for them to attack a warehouse like that?” 

“Not at all,” Biggs shakes his head, “not anymore at least. Used to be that there wasn’t anything that they wouldn’t do to get their message across, but they’d changed by the time I joined up. Like, a lot. So much so that they ousted our cell because they thought Barret was becoming too extremist with his plans.”

“Bombings  _ are  _ a bit extremist,” Cloud points out.

“Yeah well,” the man shrugs, “by their standards back then, attacking a warehouse above the plate and not being shy about causing a ruckus with it is also too extremist.”

“So what is it you’re afraid of?” Maybe if Cloud can get this out of Biggs and then convince him that there’s no reason to be afraid, then the man will actually go the hell to sleep.

“I’m afraid that there’s some truth behind that rumor that they cut a deal with Wutai,” Biggs admits, “think about it. You saw the equipment they had, what else would they be storming a warehouse for if not materia?”

Cloud doesn’t respond to that. The conversation with Prompto from earlier in the day pings in the back of Cloud’s mind and he’s suddenly not sure if he can say anything that will make Biggs less spooked about this. 

“If they did cut a deal with Wutai,” Biggs says quietly, “that’d be bad. Real bad.”

The ex-SOLDIER can only nod in response. It would be bad.

“Because it's one thing if Shinra is just throwing out propaganda that we’re connected with Wutai,” the man continues, “it sucks, and it’s dangerous, but we could probably prove that we’re not.”

“But you can’t reasonably do that if HQ is actually in bed with Wutai,” Cloud concludes.

“Yep,” Biggs nods, “and Avalanche being in bed with Wutai, acting on Wutai’s behalf…”

“Means war.” Cloud finishes.

“Another war,” Biggs begins pacing again, “but this time with more advanced weaponry and a hell of a lot more for both sides to lose.”

Cloud thinks of Prompto, and what he must have seen and been forced to do when he was in Wutai. Thinks of his haunted gaze, and the stubborn will that he knows his little brother possesses. And it’s almost painstakingly easy to come to the conclusion that one of his brother’s goals is to keep another war from happening. 

“Well,” Cloud says, “we’ll just have to make sure that we move carefully and do what we can to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Biggs stops pacing, looking back at Cloud with slightly widened eyes.

“... _ We? _ ” the man asks.

Cloud lets out a small groan in response.

Dammit.

“Just get some sleep, Biggs”

Biggs grins unabashedly and Cloud has the irritating feeling that he’s become more than invested by now. What was Prompto saying about “settling” again?

“Thanks for stopping by, Cloud.” Biggs says with a nod, sounding genuine grateful. 

Cloud studiously ignores the heat that rushes up to his ears.

“It was on the way home,” he mutters, giving Biggs one more stern look and making his escape in the direction of his apartment.

( _ Biggs' house was  _ not  _ on the way _ , a voice that sounds like Prompto’s laughs in Cloud’s head.)

…

Cloud’s plans for a quick return to his apartment are thwarted, which is something he thinks that he’s going to sadly have to get used to.

His path takes him past the Seventh Heaven again, which is closed for the night. There though, he notices a group of men that clearly are not from this Undercity hanging around. They’re dressed in gaudy and eye-catching clothes with an odd flashiness to them, which is at conflict with the more practical and laid back style he’s seen of literally everyone down here in the Undercity save for Avalanche and the members of the Watch.

They carry themselves with a sort of casual slimy-ness that sets off alarms in Cloud’s head. Especially when he overhears them asking about a man with a gun for an arm. The fact that Barret’s face pops into Cloud’s mind isn’t surprising, but the very subtle curl of concern in his gut is.

_ Dammit _ .

Luckily enough, they’re idiots. So it’s easy to catch them with a tiny hint that he may know some information and have them lead him away from the sparse night crowd and away from the main parts of town.

They’re not Shinra, he learns, which is good. Because if it was Shinra asking around for Barret already, then that would be a major problem. But they are someone’s thugs, someone who must carry some degree of danger and respect because they’re all armed more than a common gang should be and they don’t hesitate to attack Cloud when they realize that he’s played them.

Not that it’s a challenge to take them out, Cloud does it with an almost clinical precision, wanting this to be over and done with as fast and as cleanly as possible. The ease with which most of them fall, compounded with the rising exhaustion leftover from the warehouse and Roche makes Cloud sloppy though. Because he doesn’t notice that one’s slipped behind him until the barrel of a gun is at his temple.

“Gotcha you sonuvabitch,” the man snarls, reeking of cigarette smoke.

Cloud freezes, cursing his own carelessness because he’s better than this and this guy was the fucking last one too.

“Outta blow your brains out…” the man muses, but Cloud can feel the subtle tremble moving throughout his body. 

Not that it helps him much. Because a shot to his head at point blank range is more than enough to incapacitate him (though a single one probably won’t kill him, if the mako works fast enough), and even if Cloud manages to move and throw off his aim, a shot from so close will still probably fuck him up something terrible. 

Cloud realizes with a sinking feeling that he’s just going to have to see what this guy plans to do and wait for an opening to get out of this. The ex-SOLDIER is mentally going through the pros and cons of trying to elbow the guy or crush his toes when there’s a thrum in the air consistent with materia use. 

And then a  _ lightning bolt  _ strikes the guy behind him. 

There’s a choked off grunt and a hissing sound as the smell of burnt flesh and ozone fills the air, and then the body behind him is crumpling pitifully to the ground. 

“Dude,” that’s Prompto’s voice, and Cloud turns his head to see his brother standing at the entrance to the clearing, green orb clutched in his hand. “Do  _ not  _ tell me that you almost got wasted by some Sector 6 street thugs.”

Prompto’s going for teasing, but Cloud can hear how his voice shakes slightly, and he instantly feels like shit.

“It’s been a long night,” the ex-SOLDIER sighs, reattaching his sword to his back. “I got careless.”

“Well could you not make a habit of getting careless when I’ve finally got to see you again after five years?” 

Prompto still sounds anxious, so Cloud turns fully and makes his way over to lay his hands on his brother's shoulders.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, “it won’t happen again.”

Prompto frowns, but doesn’t argue, merely tucking his materia back into his pocket and scowling at the bodies over Cloud’s shoulder.

“What did they want?” he asks.

“How’d you know to come here?” Cloud answers with another question. Prompto looks like he’s fairly well rested, though his hair is a mess, and he’s got his backpack. Cloud’s chest starts to ache a bit.

“I was looking around for you actually,” Prompto answers quietly, “heard some people say they saw you walk away with a bunch of out-of-city thugs.”

“They were asking about Barret,” Cloud admits, looking back at the bodies himself.

“By name?” his brother asks anxiously.

“No,” Cloud shakes his head, “by the gun-arm.”

Prompto frowns, stepping away from Cloud (though not before placing his hands over Cloud’s and squeezing briefly) and walking around him to get a closer look at them. 

“Why would  _ they  _ be interested in him…?” his brother asks quietly.

“Are they Shinra?” Cloud asks, just to make sure. Prompto seems to recognize them.

“No,” Prompto shakes his head, “a gang that works out of Sector 6, I don’t know why they would be asking about Barret.”

“Nothing good, probably.” Cloud muses, walking up to stand next to Prompto.

“Definitely not,” his brother sighs.

“You headed off somewhere?” Cloud asks after a few minutes of silence, afraid to hear the answer.

“Yeah,” Promtpo finally looks away from the bodies to look at Cloud with a bit of a sad smile, “I don’t want to go, but I really need to grab some better gear for the Reactor tomorrow. I don’t want to be a liability.”

Cloud sighs, “I get it.”

He does, but he still doesn’t like it.

“You’ll be safe going at this time of night?” he asks.

“Time of morning, almost.” Prompto corrects with a tiny chuckle. “And yeah,” he goes on, “I’ll be fine, I do this often.”

Cloud’s not sure whether Prompto means for that to make him feel better, but it doesn’t.

“Want me to go along with you?” he asks. His brother smiles a bit bigger in response.

“Kind of, yeah.” Prompto responds, “But you shouldn’t, you look dead on your feet right about now.”

Cloud sighs, because Prompto’s not wrong. He feels dead on his feet, now that all the adrenaline from the night is fading. A part of him wants to argue, wants to not let his brother out of his sight to a place that Cloud is unfamiliar with, wants to keep him where he knows he can be safe. But a bigger part of him understands that Prompto was also a Shinra Elite operative, and that he’s made his way through life to this moment without needing Cloud to watch over him. It rankles a bit, hurts if Cloud’s being perfectly honest, but Prompto can take care of himself just fine with him now.

“You’ll be careful tomorrow?” Cloud asks.

“Sure will,” Prompto nods, “I’ll have Barret, Tifa and Jessie with me. We’ve got each other's backs.”

“Ok then,” is all Cloud can really say to that.

“Ok then,” Prompto repeats, before his somber look suddenly switches to one of mischief.

“What…?” Cloud mutters, because nothing good has  _ ever  _ come of Prompto getting that look on his face.

“You totally took those guys down because you were worried about Barret and the rest of Avalanche.”

Cloud’s cheeks heat up.

“Shut up.” he says.

“You big ol’ softie!”

“Shut. Up.”

“Cloud’s making  _ frieeeennnds _ !”

“I can _ not _ believe that I missed you.”

…

He parts ways with Prompto after they clue in the Watch on the bodies, and quickly finds that he really does feel dead on his feet.

Nevertheless, Cloud does not turn Tifa away when she stops by that night. He’s not sure why the memory of his promise to her is so far forward in his head tonight, but he knows that if he plans on sticking around, then he needs to make good on it.

He  _ wants  _ to make good on it.

(“What’s with you all of sudden?” Tifa asks.

“Like you’re losing that hard-edge.” Tifa says.

“That bad?” Cloud asks in return.

“No, I like it.” She smiles, “Seeing Prompto again really warmed you up, Cloud.”

“...Yeah. I guess it did.”)

Cloud couldn’t make good on his promise to protect Prompto either, but he’s got another chance now and he’ll be damned if he fucks it up again.

...

There’s a sharp sense of foreboding and anxiety that thrums through Cloud’s body when he shoots awake. He’s not sure where it comes from, but hearing Tifa’s frantic voice and seeing her panicked gaze as she rushes in to ask for help makes him think that he’s going to need to change his plans for the day. 

When he finds himself staring at a sky blanketed by the writhing forms of the apparitions that he’d encountered alongside the flower girl, Cloud feels his stomach sink. There’s not much that stresses him out quite like fighting an enemy he doesn’t understand, and the ex-SOLDIER knows all of nothing about these things. To say that his anxiety spikes would be an understatement. 

And then Tifa says that Barret and Jessie are fighting an unknown number of them off down at the bar, and Cloud does what he does best. He pushes down the anxiety and the confusion to examine more at a later time and takes up his sword.

Tifa’s presence at his side is comforting, even though he can basically feel the curls of panic emanating off of her. She’s strong, and doesn’t falter next to him, and together they fight their way through the beings.

It becomes clear very quickly that while their physical attacks aren’t doing nothing, they aren’t getting the apparitions to move out of the way fast enough. Cloud hazards a precious minute to utilize the Assess materia he’d received from Chadley, and braces for the disorienting influx of information to hit his mind. It paints a picture of a being only partially corporeal, almost otherworldly in its shape. The materia can’t determine if there’s any inherent element to the being’s inner stream of mana, but it does show Cloud enough to know that there are enough gaps in it that something similar could dig in and overtake it. 

Magic then.

The moment that his veins cool down from the flow of mana and mako from using Assess, Cloud focuses again and lobs a Fire at one of them directly in their path. It does what Cloud needs it to do.

The specter throws its back with a soundless cry that still somehow chills him to his bones, and then it slumps in place a few feet above the ground. It’s form loses some of it’s wispiness and transparency, seeming to become more solid as it slumps. It gives Cloud an idea.

“Tifa!” 

In just the short time that they’d fought alongside one another the day before, Tifa and him had been able to develop a respectable level of ease and understanding on the battlefield. Because of this, the woman follows his gaze and charges without even asking. Cloud can tell even from a distance that Tifa’s punches and kicks land harder and hit differently, and soon enough, the specter fades from existence. 

“That worked!” Tifa sounds equal parts shocked and relieved as the path the bar clears up. None of the specters that are still persistently circling the air seem interested in taking the place of their fallen friend, so Cloud lowers his sword and begins moving. 

“Looks like it,” he murmurs as Tifa falls into step behind him, “magic seems like the way to go.”

“I don’t have any offensive magic materia though,” Tifa replies, voice sounding frustrated. “There’s not much down here that I can’t take down with my fists, and I’ve never been the best with magic.”

“I’m sure you’re better at it than you think you are,” Cloud answers easily, “you should invest in some lightning materia at least. Might come in handy if you keep doing jobs with Avalanche.”

“Well I have to make sure we can get on this job first,” Tifa says worriedly, “but I’ll take that suggestion to heart.”

As if responding to Tifa’s words, this is the time when the specters decide that they want to get in their way again. This time by forming a wall of shifting black and gray that they can’t force past. 

“The hell?” Cloud mutters.

The apparitions are undulating so violently and so quickly that Cloud wouldn't even know where to start picking them off to try and get through.

“What even  _ are  _ these things?” Tifa asks.

“Don’t know,” Cloud mutters back, “all I can tell you is that I’m pretty sure that people can’t even see them unless they’ve already interacted with them or touched them.”

“That’s not creepy at all,” comes the sarcastic reply.

“At least they can be killed,” Cloud offers, looking around. “Is there another way through?”

Because they don’t have time to be stalled here.

“Yeah,” Tifa answers, and Cloud turns to see her pointing down a street next to her, “this way!”

Cloud follows her down the road and watches as the specters swirl through the air around them. None of them seem primed to attack, but who knows how long that’s going to last.

“What?” Tifa’s gasp has Cloud looking forward and his eyes widen as he watches another wall of the crazy apparitions rise into existence in front of them.

“Again?” he groans.

“Are they trying to keep us from reaching the others!?” Tifa asks frantically.

It’s a disconcerting thought. For an enemy that they can just barely fight to be so intelligent to not only premeditate something like that, but also actively adapt like this to follow their plan.

“Gotta find another way,” he says instead of answering her, not that he thinks that she really expected an answer anyway. The evidence is right in front of them.

“Cloud!” Tiifa calls, and he takes his attention away from the wall of specters to look at her pointing down an alley. “This way!”

The ex-SOLDIER nods and moves to follow her. Though that quickly changes to him taking the lead as a flurry of the apparitions start charging down the alleyway towards them. Instinct has him bringing his arm up to shield himself as he places his body in between them and Tifa, but the collision of the specter’s bodies into his...doesn’t hurt.

In fact, they go right  _ through  _ him. 

There’s some sort of force or momentum that nearly knocks him off of his feet though, and he hears Tifa yelp and stumble from behind him. 

“Dammit.” Cloud curses, planting his feet and trying to keep his stance. It’s difficult, but he quickly realizes that he can in fact walk forward if he needs to, albeit impeded.

“Stay behind me,” he says over his shoulder.

“Ok!”

With Tifa’s agreement, Cloud starts to walk forward, arm still instinctively (if uselessly) to protect his face. The specters continue to pass harmlessly through him, but the force they kick up is nothing to scoff at.

“It’s like trying to fight a hurricane!” Tifa pants from behind him, and Cloud feels like that is apt description.

“Almost there,” he assures as the sound of gunfire reaches his ears, “stay on your feet.”

“You don’t have to tell  _ me  _ that!” she somehow manages in a light tone. And surely enough, she keeps pace with him as Cloud pushes his way through the open area that the Seventh Heaven occupies, and the rush of beings pressing against them suddenly stops, nearly making him stumble.

“About damn time!” he hears Barret shout, and Cloud decides to ignore the cool wash of relief he feels when he looks up to see the bigger man and Jessie still in one piece.

“They just keep coming!” Jessie sounds frantic, and the relief fades into a sharp focus.

The specters seem to be circling this area in particular, and Cloud finds it odd that it’s completely empty save for the four of them. It’s early morning, the artificial suns that light the slums just barely beginning their day cycle, but this part of the Undercity is normally such a hub of activity that it’s still odd.

They seem pretty intent on screwing with Barret and Jessie, from what he can see. Which is bad, Cloud decides, as he hears Jessie worry about running out of ammo soon. Tifa must hear it as well, because she starts forward to try and help them, only for a specter with a larger...presence, than the others to dart forward and smother her.

“Ah!” she cries out, and Cloud panics as several of the apparitions break from their vortex in the sky to bar his path to her.

“Tifa!” Cloud shouts, already preparing his weapon.

“Cloud!” Tifa shouts frantically. 

“Prompto!” comes a new voice.

The sound of his brother’s voice is punctuated with the sound of a gunshot, and then a projectile soars across the air above them, before seemingly imploding into a ball of bright light. Light that seems to disorient the specters as they all scramble away from it momentarily, clearing the way for Cloud.

The instinct to turn and search for the exact location of his brother is achingly difficult to move past, but the one on Tifa doesn’t let go, and her pained cries have Cloud lunging forward. 

He’s careful not to swing in a way that might harm Tifa, sword just barely grazing something as he swings it through the being’s form. More gunshots join the steady sound of Barret and Jessie’s, but these sound like they’re coming from a weapon with a higher caliber of bullets. 

“You’re late too!” Barret shouts, and Cloud hears his brother huff from somewhere behind him.

“Um,  _ rude _ !” Prompto complains, “I only came all the way down here because you guys were late for our meet-up at the station!”

“Just in time for the party!” Jessie tries to chuckle, but Cloud can hear the strain of exertion in it.

“Ugh!” Tifa groans as she finally manages to pull her body from the grasp of the specter. Cloud immediately goes for a more decisive strike on it, but misses as it flies off into the air above them as if observing. Cloud takes a moment to make sure Tifa is alright- which she is- and then glares up at it. There’s the sound of boots on gravel and the faint warmth of a body at his right. 

“That the boss?” Prompto wonders, and Cloud finally looks over at his brother. 

He’s dressed in black, eyes sharp on the specter in the air in front of them, with a tension coiled in his shoulders. In his right hand he holds a gun that seems to be a cross between a simple handgun and a rifle. It’s sleek and modern in design, but seems to have seen its fair share of use and in the seconds that Cloud spares to examine it, he can see two materia slots etched into the long barrel- both filled with a green orb.

Cloud turns back to look up at the being, feeling Tifa take place at his other side. 

“Looks like it,” he answers. It's definitely different from the others in some way.

“Well,” Prompto says lightly, “guess the first step is to bring him down from there!”

“We might have to deal with those guys first,” Tifa notes, pointing to a group of six other apparitions that separate themselves from the swarm and start moving down towards them.

“Boss fights can never be simple,” Prompto groans. Cloud snorts, despite the situation.

“Videogames have rotted your brain,” he states. In that moment, the specters reach and the three of them scatter. 

“Hey!” Prompto huffs, words accompanied by the sound of him firing his gun. “You’ll thank me for the things I’ve learned from them someday!”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” 

The apparitions don’t hit hard, but they  _ are  _ hard to hit. Cloud finds himself struggling to predict where they’re going to move and what they’ll strike with, which makes it difficult to land his own attacks on them. The sound of Tifa’s grunts and her fists connecting with something solid reaches his ears, and he’s thankful that at least she seems to be faring well.

“Any tips?” Prompto asks breathlessly, before Cloud hears a click and then several rapid shots in succession.

“Magic,” the ex-SOLDIER responds, already directing his inner pool of mana towards his fire materia. 

“Gotcha!”

“Ugh!” Tifa cries out. Cloud whips his head around to see translucent black spikes receding back into the body of one of the apparitions, Tifa briefly gripping her arm before shaking her head and rushing back in.

Trusting that she’ll hold out for him to at least get a cast and a few hits off, Cloud looks back at the one in front of him.

Fire has the same effect on this one as it did the other, and he takes his moment to deliver a flurry of harsh slashes at it. Which seems to finish it off as it quickly disperses into something like dust in the air. 

Not missing a beat, Cloud pushes his mana outwards again, turning and throwing another Fire at one of the two circling Tifa. It lands true, and Tifa takes the opportunity to finish that one off quickly as well. 

“Cloud, look!” 

He turns to see Prompto pointing up, following his finger to see the main specter slumping over and falling closer to the ground. He’s confused for but a split second before he realizes what had to have happened.

“They’re connected to you, huh?” Cloud mutters, gripping the hilt of his sword in both hands and lunging forward in a brutal thrust.

Though it appears to just go into the being’s body harmlessly, Cloud can feel the resistance and ultimate give of something, and the air around them thrums with another one of those silent screeches. In hopes of ending it as fast as possible, Cloud pulls back and begins slashing at it again.

The specter takes a few more blows before seemingly gathering its bearings and righting itself in the air. Cloud swears under his breath, preparing to pull back and see how this one likes Fire.

Almost faster than his enhanced eyes can perceive, it lunges at him.

“ _ Cloud! _ ” the sounds of Prompto and Tifa’s voices are muffled by the rush of air arching past his ears. The ex-SOLDIER grunts as a sharp pain shoots through his head, dizzying him as the taste of dust and rot fills his mouth. The odd chill that these things carry with them seems to pierce through his skin down into his bones, and Cloud feels a dull sort of panic rise within his chest as he feels the energy start to leak from his limbs. 

His thoughts quickly go numb and hazy, so Cloud’s not sure how long he’s in that state before the apparition screeches around him and throws itself away. What he immediately focuses on though, is the feeling of a hand gripping his shoulder. 

“Ugh,” Cloud groans as sensation starts to rapidly return to his limbs and head.

“You good?” Prompto’s voice is much clearer this time, and very subtly anxious-sounding. 

“Yeah,” he coughs, voice hoarse. He can hear Tifa still fighting in the background, so Cloud shakes his head and refocuses his eyes. 

The boss specter is once again slumped in the air, Tifa taking the opportunity to throw heavy blows at it. The smell of ozone and static is still lingering in the air, and there’s a thrumming energy where Prompto’s hand meets Cloud’s shoulder. A quick glance around shows that there’s only one of the lesser specters still separate from the main swarm.

And it’s quickly moving towards them.

“Watch out!” Cloud turns his body and shoves Prompto behind him, bringing his sword up across his body just in time to block a flurry of those spikes that he’d seen another use earlier.

“These guys are assholes,” Prompto grunts. His left hand leaves Cloud’s shoulder and stretches around to press against Cloud’s ear as his right arm extends over his shoulder and he fires off multiple rounds into the thing’s body. There’s some type of silencer on the barrel of Prompto’s gun, but the something in the inner workings of it still clunks loudly with each shot, so Cloud appreciates his forethought. 

The rounds do their job, and the specter arches and writhes before fading into dust.

Another silent scream pulses in the air, and they both turn to see Tifa just about to land one of her devastating aerial kicks on the boss specter, when a flurry of them shoot from the swarm and throw her off course. She yelps as she’s sent flying.

“Tifa!” Cloud shouts.

“I’m ok!” She shouts back, throwing her head and legs in a flip and landing safely in a crouch on the ground. “Finish it off, quick!”

“I’ll cover you,” Prompto says, and Cloud nods in response, trusting Tifa’s word.

“Going in,” the ex-SOLDIER warns, before focusing on the mako coursing through the veins in his legs.

He gets a running start, feeling the mako in his legs respond like it always has.

Another stream of the specters starts to rush for him, but a Thunder spell quickly bars their path and sends them off course. Taking the moment, Cloud jumps high into the air, bringing his sword above his head. Letting gravity and his strength do what they do, the ex-SOLDIER brings the blade down in a devastating arc onto the slumped over specter’s body.

It works. 

The thing screams again, but something is different about this one as it curls and writhes away and fades back into the swarm. Immediately something about the energy in the air dies out, and the swarm disperses into individual apparitions flying around erratically and with seemingly no purpose. 

Prompto and Tifa once again take their places at his sides and they all watch as the beings finally seem to make their way up and away from the bar. Cloud feels a brief moment of respite amongst his confusion, before he hears Jessie cry out.

They all turn to see the woman take a hard fall down the steps of the bar to ground below.

“Jessie!” Tifa shouts as some stray specters seem to converge on the woman and wraith around her momentarily. The scream that Jessie lets out is not something that Cloud ever wants to hear again in his life.

They’re already rushing for her when the apparitions suddenly stop and then release her, much to everyone’s confusion. Cloud watches with baited breath as they seem to circle over Jessie for another moment before flying away as well, thus leaving no more.

There’s a tense moment of silence before Tifa is darting forward to crouch down next to Jessie, who is groaning and pushing herself up to a sitting position. Barret just about jumps down the steps to join them.

When Cloud steps up to them a few seconds later, he winces at the sight of Jessie’s leg.

“Damn,” Prompto murmurs, coming up to stand beside him. The ex-SOLDIER’s inclined to agree. The woman’s foot is twisted at a completely unnatural angle and there’s already a fierce level of swelling starting to develop around her knee.

There’s no way she’s walking on that.

Jessie insists that she’s fine, which gives Barret an opening to ponder about the appearance of the apparitions, but Cloud knows better.

“Does it hurt?” he asks, after he’s crouched down next to her.

“Wish I could say no…” Jessie gives a humourless chuckle, “...but yeah.”

That’s all that Cloud needs to hear to lift her up into his arms, starting up the stairs to the bar. He vaguely hears Barret yelling to get a crowd of people that somehow just appeared to disperse, but most of his focus is on Jessie in his arms and Prompto and Tifa following him up the stairs.

“So embarrassing,” Jessie is muttering, “I hate playing the damsel in distress.”

“Damsel’s always get the guy in the end though,” Prompto quips cheerfully. 

“Shut it.” Cloud deadpans.

“It’s true!” Prompto insists, grin wide. “The damsel in distress always gets her knight in shining SOLDIER fatigues and-”

“Why did I miss you again?” Cloud groans as he sets Jessie down gently at one of the high bar stools.

“Because I’m a delight!”

Cloud sighs.

“He’s pretty delightful,” Tifa laughs, helping absolutely nothing.

“I’ll say,” Jessie agrees, dissolving into giggles.

“You see?” Prompto moves into his direct field of vision, “These lovely ladies agree with me!”

“Because they don’t know you like I do.” Cloud retorts, scanning his brother for injuries. 

Prompto looks fine, from what Cloud can tell. Though he’d likely been surrounded by them at point, Prompto seemed more than capable of maintaining a safe distance, which was something Cloud and Tifa couldn’t really let themselves do. A quick glance at Prompto’s face tells Cloud that his brother is doing the same thing to him at the moment, so he takes an extra few seconds to examine his brother. 

As he’d noted earlier, Prompto looks infinitely more prepared to take on a dangerous job. He’s wearing a black vest with various patches sewn into it (an impressive feat, since cLoud recognizes reinforced kevlar when he sees it) and a plaid kilt-like attachment on the back. Standard issue military grade tank underneath with some armored waist trainer-esque garment over it that reminds Cloud of the thing Barret wears, black fitted pants with vaguely faded line details on them, and combat boots. His gun is resting in a holster strapped to his right thigh, and Cloud can just barely see what looks like a collapsed blade attached to his belt at the back. 

It’s more than a little difficult to reconcile the memories of his little brother in his too-big infantry uniform with the man before him right now, but Cloud’s still a little too in awe of even being able to look at him for that to bother him too much now.

“Let’s have a look at that leg,” Tifa says, crouching down and laying a gentle hand on Jessie’s ankle, which gets her a sharp cry of pain.

Definitely not walking on that.

Barret barges into that bar at the moment, apparently done scaring the crowd away. 

“What’d I miss?”

Prompto shares a mischievous glance with Jessie and Cloud dies a little inside.

“I’m a damsel, Cloud’s my knight in shining fatigues,” Jessie says with a grin, “and Prompto’s a delight!”

“Huh?” is all Barret says in response. Tifa, for her part, just laughs quietly.

“I’m a delight!” Prompto says happily.

“You’re a pest.” Cloud grumbles.

“I’m de- _ light _ of Cloud’s life!” Prompto continues as though Cloud didn’t say anything.

Jessie snorts and quickly loses herself to cackles, Tifa puts her face in her hands to muffle her giggling, and Barret just looks confused. Prompto looks triumphant, Cloud crosses his arms.

“I cannot believe I missed you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So like, I can't be the only one who talked to Biggs after talking to Jessie, right? Because I literally cannot for the life of me find the scene where Cloud talks to Biggs outside of his house anywhere! It's wild. I will say that I probably stumbled onto him by accident since the game literally tells you to go in like, the opposite direction, but justice for Biggs much!?
> 
> So here we got to see our golden boys fight alongside one another! It was really fun to write actually, we'll be doing the whole Reactor 5 section next chapter. 
> 
> Has anyone noticed that literally every main character of FFVII (except for Red and Aerith) wears some kind of armor attachments on their clothes? It's actually hilarious to me for some reason, just like everyone noteworthy who wears shorts in the Remake also wear compression shorts underneath? Like, even young Cloud? I was trying to decide how I would describe Prompto's outfit, and I figured his crownsguard fatigues actually fit in decently well with the VII aesthetic, but I realized that he doesn't have any random armor on, so I gave him something like Barret's lol. It's literally so weird, but so practical in a way, but also so random?
> 
> Anyways, that's all for now folks, as always; I love and adore all comments and reviews and I look forward to next time.
> 
> Stay happy and healthy!


	6. V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You think that he’s around.” Reno says plainly. 
> 
> Tseng merely arches one perfect eyebrow and stares.
> 
> “You think that he’s around,” the redhead continues, “and you want to know if the reason he’s still around is because I let him go.”
> 
> “You have to admit that it’s curious,” Tseng says calmly, “I’ve met and seen Prompto fight myself, after all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello to all! Dawn's back again with a another chapter. As always, I own nothing and also as always, checkout the lovely art for this work!  
> https://happy-orc.tumblr.com/post/617395893925249024/a-picture-of-cloud-and-prompto-as-kids-from  
> https://happy-orc.tumblr.com/post/617924290388590592/ff15ff7-crossovers-are-my-jam-prompto-and-ignis  
> https://happy-orc.tumblr.com/post/619952985257230336/from-breakthedawns-in-the-beginning-there-was

Tseng corners Reno a bit faster than he really expects.

“A word, if you will?” the man asks, like Reno has any real choice in the matter, and starts to walk before Reno even answers. 

_Shit_ , Reno thinks, sighing quietly and turning back from where he was just ready to head home for the night after giving his report on the Ancient girl’s daily activities. 

The Shinra building is still awash with activity as employees from various departments (most from Tuesti’s) scramble to get plans in place for the reconstruction of the Sector 1 Reactor. Honestly, if the Turk was a little less jaded and a little more sentimental, he’d be impressed by just how dedicated and resilient the regular employees of the Shinra building are. One thing that Reno has come to understand from his time with the company, is that there’s a world of difference between the types of people that work standard nine to five hours for Shinra and the upper echelon of the company. It’s almost enough to make him feel a bit of sympathy for the stressed and weary-eyed accountants that he and Tseng pass on their way to the elevators. Just almost though.

They have good reason to be stressed, he figures. As Reno understands, the hold-up is getting funding redirected from Public Security and Weapons development to throw towards both cleaning up the Plate around the Reactor and trying to salvage the Reactor itself. And that’s no small ask, because Weapons Development (and Public Security to a lesser extent) have been eating up the Shinra budget ever since that whole fiasco with the Genesis Clones, and either Scarlet or Heidegger have managed to convince the President that this investment in Shinra’s Military is the best choice. 

Reno finds himself lazily examining Tseng as they step onto the elevator that will carry them back to the Turk’s floor.

Heidegger definitely wants War, Scarlet likely just wants an excuse to flex her power and an outlet for her sadistic tendencies, and the President has to be going along with it because he sees more money and resources at the end of it. So what are the Turks going to do in all of this?

If Tseng notices Reno watching him, he doesn’t react, body relaxed and face the picture of serenity. It used to creep Reno out honestly, just how impassive Tseng is by nature, but he’s long since gotten used to it. Hell, it's even made him feel better about things on occasion when he’s certain that he and Tseng are agreeing on something.

But, if Tseng is calling him in to ask about what Reno thinks he’s going to ask about, then this may be one of the rare occasions where they have very different opinions about something, and Reno’s not looking forward to it.

“Something very curious has happened,” Tseng begins when they’re in place in his office. Rather than sit behind his desk, he sits on one of the arm chairs and gestures for Reno to sit on the couch across from him.

“Yeah?” the redhead asks, flopping down on the couch carelessly. Inwardly, his defenses are raised. Tseng only chooses to sit directly across from them without his desk as a barrier when he’s in interrogation mode.

“You’re familiar with Ignis Scientia?” Tseng asks, staring at him.

“‘Course, yo.” Reno nods, “Haven’t seen him in a hot minute, but I remember the kid.” 

“Hmm,” Tseng hums thoughtfully, “well he’s recently returned from his medical leave. I received a formal request from Heidegger to temporarily place him under Public Security purview so that he may assist them as an analyst while they attempt to flush out and destroy Avalanche.”

Reno only nods. They both know that anything Heidegger wants the Turks to do lately is not at all a “request”. 

“So for the time being, he reports directly to Heidegger,” Tseng explains uselessly, like Reno doesn’t already know what it means for a Turk to be requisitioned by one of the Department Heads. “But all of his reports still come to me afterwards.”

“This about something in his report yo?”

“Prompto Strife.”

Reno feels a headache coming on, but studiously keeps it from showing on his face. “What about him, yo?”

“Would you remind me of the details of your last encounter with him?” Tseng asks serenely. Reno nearly huffs. Tseng has an eidetic memory, he never needs reminding of anything.

“Wasn’t nothing special yo,” Reno plays along anyway. “Caught up with the kid halfway between Fort Condor and the Mythril Caverns,” he recites, “and he wasn’t about to come quietly.”

“You two fought, correct?”

“Sure did,” the redhead nods, “we trained that kid well, he gave me a run for my money.”

“And?” Tseng asks expectantly, and Reno puts on a suitably sheepish expression for his response.

“I fucked up, yo.” He says with a small shrug, “hesitated when I shouldn’t have, and he got away from me.”

“Right, I remember now.” Tseng bullshits. “You found it difficult to terminate someone who’d been under your direct supervision for such a long time.”

“Told y’all I wasn’t cut out for training.”

“And if I’m remembering correctly,” Tseng looks up thoughtfully, “you stated in your report that Strife left his fight with you severely injured with no curative materia or restoratives and headed for the Mythril Caverns.”

“Right,” Reno responds, keeping his face carefully relaxed.

“It was your opinion as both an experienced and tenured Turk as well as hisTraining Facilitator and Mentor, that Prompto Strife would not survive the trip, no?”

“If the monsters in the cave didn’t take him out,” Reno states, “then the Zolom sure would have. Kid didn’t have access to a chocobo, and we had eyes on both sides of the cave by the next morning.”

“And so,” Tseng looks back down at Reno’s face, “it was your direct recommendation that we halt pursuit when he didn’t turn up on either side of the Mythril Caverns nor the cave itself when after two days of searching for him.”

Reno shrugs. “Thought he probably leant into his stubborn streak and kept going when he could barely defend himself, yo. Seemed likely that he got ate by the Zolom, especially if he kept goin’ that same night.”

“And thus Prompto Strife was taken off the _‘active pursuit’_ list and placed instead on the ‘ _presumed dead_ ’ list,” Tseng concludes, “he remained on the ‘ _kill-on-sight_ ’ list on the off chance he survived his circumstances.”

“Ya see,” Reno grins, “you remember just fine, yo.”

“I suppose that I do,” Tseng says plainly, “though there’s something that I neglected to ask you about when you first gave your report.”

“Ok,” Reno shrugs again, “go for it.”

“Ignis Scientia tried to stop Prompto Strife before he left Wutai.”

“Yeah,” the redhead acknowledges, “and he got his ass kicked for it.”

“Crass, but true.” Tseng says, “Ignis was not prepared to fight someone with Prompto’s particular enhancements, and he mistakenly assumed that Prompto would at least hesitate before using lethal force.”

“Fat chance that would have happened boss,” Reno snorts, “the kid had literally just found out that you and Scientia were forging emails from his bro and had been for god knows how long. He was pissed, Ignis never should have tried to take him alone.”

“It was a miscalculation on our part certainly,” Tsneg nods, “though we at least expected that we would have had another few months before Prompto came to that conclusion.”

Reno says nothing to that, recognizing that the conversation is moving into dangerous territory for him. Instead he attempts to redirect.

“I don’t know how Scientia didn’t think to prepare for Strife’s enhancements,” Reno mutters, “we all knew that the kid had mako enhancements comparable to SOLDIERs.”

“Though they seemed to have manifested in him very differently than they do in SOLDIER,” Tseng nods.

Reno had noticed, of course, even before he’d been officially read into Prompto’s mako injections. The kid had been way too strong for his tiny frame, though not quite to the level of SOLDIER. He was damn fast too, could almost keep up with Reno at times. But what had clued Reno and Rude into the fact that the kid had to have been enhanced prior to coming under their watch was the fact that Prompto could tank hits that would lay men twice his size flat and get right back up as though nothing happened.So it hadn’t come as a surprise when they’d been told that Prompto had been flagged for some type of experiment that Shinra had done way back then _and_ that mako was involved.

They’d never been read into the exact nature of the experiment that resulted in the kid’s capabilities, but whatever the hell it was, the project had been abruptly shut down when the Genesis Clones started to become a bigger issue and they had to divert staffing. With that, Prompto Strife had been dumped into their laps to be watched without any memory or practical knowledge about what had happened to him. 

Reno’s always thought that the kid found out, and that’s what led to him digging around and eventually finding out that he was partnered with Scientia in Wutai specifically for the purpose of recording the ultimate results of the experiment. 

Because even though Tseng had never said anything, Reno could read between the lines. Ignis Scientia was plucked from Analytics and pushed into the Turks specifically for the purpose of watching Prompto Strife and reporting his findings back to whatever creep in the Science Department was responsible for overseeing that unknown experiment. If there was anything about the scientists that Shinra employed that was true across the board, it was that they never simply stopped trying out their crazy ideas, even if ordered to do so.

“So taking into account the injuries that Scientia came out of his encounter with,” Tseng is still talking, and Reno hopes that they’re getting to the meat of this conversation soon because thinking about all of this really is giving him a massive fucking headache. “I’ve always found it curious that you came out of your fight with him almost completely unscathed.”

There it is.

“You think that he’s around.” Reno says plainly. 

Tseng merely arches one perfect eyebrow and stares.

“You think that he’s around,” the redhead continues, “and you want to know if the reason he’s still around is because I let him go.”

“You have to admit that it’s curious,” Tseng says calmly, “I’ve met and seen Prompto fight myself, after all. You outclassed him in skill and experience, but his fighting abilities expanded exponentially during his time in Wutai, a time that you were completely absent from in the last two years. It stands to reason that you would have at least been roughed up a bit if you were able to injure him to the point of barely being able to defend himself like your report suggested.”

“So?” Reno asks, mildly impatient now that they’ve both stopped talking around this.

“So,” Tseng’s voice is firm, “Reno. Did you lie on your report? Did you let Prompto Strife go?”

Reno sighs heavily, but doesn’t look away from Tseng’s gaze as he answers.

“Yeah, I let him go.”

…

There’s a nervous energy about Tifa as they make their way down the train car. 

Cloud has to wonder whether or not it’s really good for her to be doing this, since it’s clearly not something that she fully believes in. He can’t proclaim to be an expert on Tifa or anything, not after they’ve spent so much time apart, but he can definitely say that this whole Avalanche thing isn’t like her. 

Going through town with her the day before, helping out the townsfolk with their problems, most petty but some not, that’s what Cloud expects from the Tifa that he knows. Living a quiet yet fulfilling life using her skills to help people out. It’s the type of person he remembers her being, and though his head tries to split itself in two every time he tries to call up specific instances from their past that supports that idea, her actions now support the idea enough all on their own. Tifa isn’t meant to be going around laying down bombs, Cloud wonders why she planned on coming along in the first place.

Maybe as a favor to Barret, the ex-SOLDIER wonders briefly as he watches the very man stride confidently and cross over into the next car, no mind at all for the people that stare at him as he walks past.

Thinking of the men who’d come around asking questions the night before makes Cloud feel his own type of nervous energy, and he can’t help but wish that Barret would at least try to be a bit more subtle. It’s no surprise at all that Tifa ends up asking him to keep an eye on the man. Cloud reluctantly agrees and moves to tell his brother that he’s switching cars.

Prompto is sitting leisurely on one of the benches, seemingly calm and unbothered by their mission. But as Cloud focuses on him a little more, he can see that Prompto’s quietly fiddling with a band around his wrist. A sure sign of his own nervousness, if Cloud’s remembering correctly.

“You good?” he asks instinctively when he steps up next to Prompto, eyes tracing his brother for any more signs of tension.

“Yeah,” Prompto grins, bright and happy and fake. “‘Course I’m good, dude.”

“Prompto.”

“What?” His brother’s time in the Turks has certainly sharpened his skills of putting on a carefree face, but Cloud still knows better. Even after five years, Prompto’s kept his habit of concentrating on Cloud’s forehead when he’s not being entirely honest.

“Is it the Reactor?” Cloud asks, “Are you just nervous about being there, or are you still iffy about the plan?”

Prompto looks for one moment like he might protest and try to tell Cloud that he’s fine again. But something in the ex-SOLDIER’s stance must communicate the fact that Cloud’s not moving until his brother gives him a straight answer, because Prompto huffs out a sigh and his smile falls into something a little more strained.

“It’s just jitters,” his brother states, “not anything that’ll affect my performance. But I gotta admit that I’m worried about everything going according to plan. I’ve had some pretty shit luck over the years so far, dude.”

Cloud wants to ask about that, wants to know anything and everything that he can about that so he knows better what he needs to protect Prompto from. But they’re on assignment right now, and the Prompto that Cloud remembers doesn’t like attention being diverted from something important to focus on him. And Cloud figures that they’ve got time, considering it seems like they’re both going to stick around Avalanche for at least a while after this.

Instead of asking, he says, “Yeah, I know the feeling.”

Prompto snorts, and seems for a second like he wants to press for more info himself, but ultimately decides not to as he crosses his arms and grins a little more genuinely.

“Let’s hope that we don’t make each other’s luck worse then,” he says, “I’m really ok though, Cloud. I have the oddest feeling that there’s no way everything goes smooth and easy, but I know that we can figure it out.”

Cloud nods in response, feeling satisfied that Prompto’s no longer fidgeting.

“Now didn’t Tifa ask you to go check on the big guy or something?” Prompto teases, and Cloud can’t do anything but sigh.

“Let’s hope that there’s Shinra employees on here looking to pick a fight,” he mutters, giving his brother a wave moving to cross the cars himself.

It’s in the back of his head to ask Prompto how he’d heard Tifa when she was speaking in just barely over a whisper, but Cloud resolves that it can wait when he realizes that not only is there a Shinra employee looking for a fight in the next car, but that it’s literally one of the same Shinra employees that had antagonized Barret only two nights previous.

Luckily, it’s not at all difficult to calm Barret down. Though the lines of his body are still rigid with tension even as he sits down and gestures for Cloud to do the same. The ex-SOLDIER finds himself morbidly curious to find out what Shinra has done to Barret in the past to make him carry such an air of tragedy about him. 

It’s something that Cloud can’t help but notice, that the only time Barret seems to be truly at some form of peace is when he’s around his daughter. And even then, the peace isn’t absolute, because Barret looks over her with such a fierce protectiveness that it's like he’s just waiting for someone to try and take her away from him.

Looking back in the direction of the car that Prompto and Tifa are still in, Cloud can’t help but feel that he’s going to be able to relate to that really soon.

_Great_ , he thinks to himself, _Biggs has somehow transferred his worrying to us._

The train ride is uneventful right up until it’s not anymore. 

When Cloud goes back to check in with Tifa again and they set off the ID scanners as the train passes them, he knows that it's going to be a long-ass day. As if he shouldn't have already guessed that. What with them being attacked by dusty-looking apparitions not even an hour ago.

“Oh no!” Tifa’s face is panicked as she looks around at the other occupants of the car. Cloud is inclined to agree, because it’s way too risky to be fighting in such close quarters with civilians all around them.

“Shit,” Prompto’s up and next to him nigh instantaneously, “I didn’t think they’d crack the IDs this fast.”  
  


“Are we compromised?” Tifa asks anxiously as the alarms continue to blare.

“As far as our identities go? No.” Prompto assures, “all of the personal info attached to the IDs are forged, and there’ll be no record of your pictures attached to them either.”

There’s something that his brother isn’t saying, but Prompto continues on before Cloud can think to ask about it.

“As far as us right here, right now?” the younger man sighs, “They’re definitely sending sentry bots after us as we speak.”

As though summoned by Prompto’s words, several sentry bots chose that very moment to crash through the windows of the train and hover dangerously in the air. The tense atmosphere brought on by the alarms immediately devolves into full blown panic as the civilians around them scramble and push to get to the next train. Tifa, without any hesitation, begins to help them along.

“You guys have to get rid of them!” she says frantically, “I’ll get the people clear of the next few cars!”

Cloud nods in acknowledgment, brandishing his sword at the bots. They’re small, and probably can’t take too many hits, but there’s a thrum of electricity that dances along their bodies that probably doesn’t bode well for the long run.

“Hard to get a clear shot off here,” Prompto says, stepping back to give Cloud some room. “I’ll get anything that gets past you and your back!”

“Sounds good,” Cloud acknowledges, and darts forward.

The metal plating of the sentry bots isn’t very strong, and one of the three crunches and crackles under one of Cloud’s swings immediately. They don’t shoot bullets at him (thankfully, because getting hit with bullets suck), rather defaulting to some electric pulses that are easy enough to block with the flat of his blade. All in all, they’re bots clearly designed for subduing the everyday pickpocket or trespasser, and they stand no chance against an ex-SOLDIER. Cloud makes quick work of them.

“Nice,” Prompto compliments already backing up to the door, “we gotta keep going, they have cameras on them and more will show up soon. They don’t have good friend or foe recognition protocols, so they’ll definitely fire at civilians if they’re in the way.”

“They’ve probably already started swarming the stations with security,” Cloud adds, following close behind Prompto. “We’re gonna have to either stop the train or jump it.”

“It wouldn’t be good for us to get stuck here with all the people on board.”

“No kidding,” Cloud responds, “they’ll just keep coming.”

Tifa is in the process of convincing the other passengers to keep going when they step into the car. Barret’s at her back, firing at a cluster of sentry bots buzzing about erratically.

“Jumping off a moving train,” Prompto mutters sarcastically, “just what I’ve always dreamed of doing.”

“Think they’ll send anything heavier duty at us?” Cloud asks instead of responding to his brother’s words. Barret seems to have a handle on the bots, and Cloud doesn’t want to get in the way of his fire, so the ex-SOLDIER takes a brief look out of the windows and behind them to see he can detect the signs of anymore approaching.

“Not while we’re on the train, probably.” Prompto muses, “I think that they’ll probably keep sending little guys to try and overwhelm so they can take us out at one of the further stops.”

There’s a crackle and a crash as Barret disables the last of the sentry bots. Cloud looks impassively at the wrecked train car as he and Prompto move forward to Tifa ushering the last of the people into the car ahead of them.

“Not much farther that they can go,” Prompto mutters nervously.

Cloud frowns, realizing that they’re near the front of the train already. They’ve got to clear out. Fast.

In an exercise of annoying-yet-appropriate timing, the windows of the train car they’re currently in shatter as well as more sentry bots crash their way into the area.

“My turn,” Cloud hears just before Tifa darts past them in a flash and intercepts one of the bots with a brutal kick.

The ex-SOLDIER joins her and together they make quick work of the remaining sentries. It’s then that the train gives a lurch and an awful screech. Cloud turns to see that Prompto’s engaged the emergency brakes.

“No time to keep thinking about it,” his brother says, “we really do have to jump off a train right now.”

Cloud merely nods, sheathing his sword and walking briskly over to where Barret is riddling one of the car doors with bullets. It works, and the man’s able to kick out the door with a triumphant noise.

“Ok,” Barret says, some of the power leaving his tone. “It’s just jumping out of the train,” he mutters, “you got this.”

It’s probably not something that Cloud is meant to hear, much like the nervous pacing around that Barret had done when they were in the elevator of an actively exploding Mako Reactor. Much like then though, Barret takes a deep breath and steels himself, vaulting himself off the moving train with a shout. Cloud ignores the jolt in his chest at watching it happen.

“Oh man…” Prompto’s the closest one to the opening after that, walking right up to it and placing his hands on the edge of it anxiously. “I thought I’d have to stop doing crap like this when I left the Turks...go figure.”

Cloud wants to reach out, maybe put a hand on his brother’s shoulder to reassure him and hopefully not clue him in that Cloud’s just as nervous simply watching Prompto about to jump.

But Prompto’s always been the type of person to just do it. Even if it was something that scared him or something that he just didn’t want to do, he’s always had a strong sense of duty and urgency that’s always outweighed his fears. So it’s not really surprising that Prompto takes a split second to look over his shoulders at them with a sharp grin. 

Then he jumps.

If watching Barret jump off of the train gave Cloud a minor jolt in his chest, then watching Prompto do it feels like a fucking anvil pressing down on it. Nevertheless, Cloud holds that same sense of duty that Prompto does, so he turns and gestures Tifa on.

It’s hard to remember sometimes that he’s former military. But watching his friend freeze at the opening, watching her stare at the zooming lights of the tunnel pass by them in a blur as the train continues to move at an intimidating pace. Well, that makes his former military status and her civilian status stand out a bit.

_I made a promise_ , Cloud thinks as he grabs Tifa, wraps her up in his arms and throws himself off the train. 

He angles his body to take the brunt of the impact, and it’s no fucking walking in the park. The Buster takes most of the force as it clangs harshly against the ground, and Cloud grunts as he moves them in a roll, shielding Tifa to the best of his ability. 

The woman in question is breathing heavily, adrenaline no doubt coursing through her form and making it difficult to calm down. Cloud’s patient with her, ignoring the disconcerting sensation of bugs crawling beneath his skin where it meets hers (his head always hurts when tries to remember just what resulted in him having such a strong revulsion to touch), as well as the jittery feeling in the back of his mind that demands that he go look for Prompto to make sure he’s alright. Instead he focuses on the warmth of her skin and the puffs of her breath against his neck. She’s alive, safe.

“You good?” he asks, when she looks up at him. 

“Yeah…” Tifa murmurs, giving Cloud that look again. It’s an odd one, some mix of awe and confusion and nostalgia and...longing? Almost. 

It makes Cloud immensely uncomfortable, because he feels like he’s missing the context for it, and he doesn’t know what it is she’s looking for when she searches his face like this. Especially when she never seems to find it. 

Now is much of the same. Tifa stares and examines his face for a moment, before her own face falls just slightly (or maybe it relaxes? Cloud really doesn’t know how to interpret it. His head hurts) and she pushes off of him.

“Are you ok?” Tifa asks, offering him a hand that he accepts despite the anxious energy set underneath his skin from the prolonged contact.

“I’m fine,” the ex-SOLDIER answers honestly. Whether by the mako enhancements or by sheer luck, Cloud’s only got a few minor scratches to speak of, nothing even worth wasting a potion on.

“That’s a relief,” his friend says, “thanks.”

“Anytime.”

Tifa gives a small smile, before aiming a frown down the tunnel stretched out before them.

“We’re so far behind,” she says quietly, and Cloud just _hears_ the guilt rising in her tone.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, walking past her a bit to look down the tunnel himself. “We just have to move forward and catch up.”

“I hope that they’re alright,” Tifa mutters, falling into step with him as Cloud begins moving down the tunnel.

“Barret’s tough,” Cloud reminds, “and so’s Prompto.”

He hopes that none of the swelling anxiety he’s feeling at the thought of Prompto getting injured in the fall reaches his voice.

It must not, because Tifa gives a tiny chuckle and says, “Yeah, you’re right. Barret won’t go down without a fight and Prompto’s a professional, like you.”

She sounds confident, which actually settles him in a weird way.

“Yeah,” Cloud responds, “he is.”

…

_“The hell you think you’re doin’, yo!?”_

_“Reno...I just…”_

_“Fuckin’ every Turk is ion high alert out lookin’ for you right now! And your little performance with Scientia caught the attention of some crazies in the Science department too!”_

_“...Is Ignis going to be ok?”_

_“_ Priorities _, kid! Fuckin priorities!”_

_“...”_

_“Where do you think you’re goin’ anyway!? To_ Midgar _!? That’s fuckin’ crazy, kid!”_

_“I need to find my brother.”_

_“He’s probably dead, yo!”_

_“But you can’t say that for sure, you said yourself that you don’t actually know what happened to him!”_

_“I know that it can’t be fuckin’ good and that no one’s seen him in years!”_

_“Well Midgar’s a damn good place to start then!”_

_“What the hell are you gonna do, Prompto? Tear into the Shinra building and wreck shit until you find the answers you want?”_

_“I might just do that!”_

_“...Fuckin seriously, yo?”_

_“...Are you going to try and stop me too?”_

_“You really think you can take me, kid?”_

_“I think that I’m going to try if you get in my way.”_

_“...”_

_“...”_

_“...Fuck.”_

_“...Reno? Where are you go-?”_

_“You fuckin’ stay low, kid. You hear me? You better move fuckin smart as shit because the bigwigs at the company are starting to do some crazy stuff lately.”_

_“Yeah, I know.”_

_“Wantin’ to go to war with Wutai again is just the tip of the iceberg, yo. I_ mean _it, Prompto. It better be a damn good while before I get Tseng pulling me aside and grilling me about why you’re not dead.”_

_“...Dead?”_

_“You think they’re gonna stop looking for you just if I tell ‘em that you got away from me, yo? With your security clearance? Hell no. Find a tiny spot in the Mythril Caverns and stay the hell there for at least four days, use your creepy monster senses or something.”_

_“And then what?”_

_“Then nothin’, yo! That’s the best I got for you unless you’re trying to relocate to the Gold Saucer or something.”_

_“...Ok, got it. Four days.”_

_“Not a day less, you hear me? Kill anyone that finds you, even if it’s me. Wait, I take that back. Just knock me silly. Rude too. Don’t you_ dare _kill Rude, kid. He still sends you birthday cards, even if he never signs ‘em.”_

_“...Right.”_

_“Don’t smile like that, yo. Four days.”_

_“Four days.”_

_“Then lay fuckin’ low.”_

_“Lay fucking low. Got it.”_

_“Good. Glad we had this little chat, yo.”_

_“Reno!”_

_“Whaddya want now? My soul or some shit?”_

_“...Thanks.”_

_“...”_

_“See ya!”_

_“You better not, yo!”_

_…_

_..._

_…_

_“Don’t fuckin’ thank me kid, I ain’t done shit for you but what’s owed.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have mentioned this already, but I'm going to be taking some creative liberties with some canon events to support both the new canon established in this story and some of the new canon established in the remake. That might not make sense right now, but just know that if something seems to not fit with what you remember about the original VII canon, it's likely purposeful and will be expanded upon later in the work.
> 
> This feels like a good time to talk about Cloud and Tifa and what I get from their relationship both in the original game and in the Remake. I should begin by saying that I am not a shipper by nature by any stretch of the imagination. You'll notice that I tend to write mainly gen, and that's mainly because I prefer to interpret most relationships as gen. I have my exceptions (and admittedly most of them are M/M or F/F pairings because I just find it significantly easier to be drawn into the emotional connection between two male presenting characters and I find that for every male love interest that a presenting female character has, there's a another female character that just feels like a much better fit) , and there's a lot of stories that I think are elevated by a nicely portrayed romance. That being said, I tend to read Cloud and Tifa (Cloud and Aerith too for that matter) as platonic on Cloud's part. I think that they make lovely life partners and their partnership is iconic, but I just prefer them both romantically with other characters. This story will focus on the relationship of the brothers and Prompto's place within the new canon, so this really isn't relevant right now, but I'm just going to go ahead and say now that if there's a romance for Cloud in this, then it will not be with Tifa or Aerith. It might skim the lines, but I feel pretty strongly that I won't be able to those pairings justice because for me personally I find a lot more nuance and emotional weight in the idea that they remain friends at the end of it all.
> 
> I say all that to say lol, that I find that Remake Cloud comes off as very awkward and uncomfortable when faced with Jessie's flirting or Tifa's emotions. I think it's because he doesn't know what he's supposed to do in return, and I get the vibe that he doesn't exactly understand his own feelings towards Tifa throughout the course of the remake, though he knows that he cares deeply for her and he wants to protect her. I also headcanon that Cloud does not like to be touched, and that it's actually a pretty serious thing for him that he starts working through as the game goes along. But he's a military dude at his core, so he just ignores it when he needs to. 
> 
> Sorry if that last stretch of dialogue was confusing, but I felt the disconnected nature of it really got across the vibe I was going for with that scene. If it's not already obvious lol, yes that Reno and Prompto in order of statements.
> 
> Anyways, I love you all and adore your feedback as always! Stay safe and happy and healthy and see y'all next time!

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo, I really just wanted Cloud and Prompto to be brothers. 
> 
> Now, as of this time, I have not finished the remake, so I don't actually know about any potential changes to the canon of FFVII. That being said, I've plotted this story out based on VII's canon while also using the new and expanded material of the remake as a starting point. So expect this to follow the remake canon for the most part until the remake canon itself starts diverging from original canon. I may change my mind when I've finished the remake, but as of the now this is what I'm working with.
> 
> I believe that I've found a pretty good way to integrate Prompto into VII's story without altering his and Cloud's characterizations to much, thus the decision to make him an ex-Turk (it'll make sense eventually, I hope.) If you're familiar with my way of writing fics, then you'll know that I like to spin narratives with a heavy focus on character interaction and studies. So the de facto main players of this fic will most definitely be Cloud and Prompto, but I also plan on seeing where VII's canon takes me as far as changing it up to include a new character. 
> 
> So this is really just a base intro to the idea and setting the foundation for rest of the story, so not much happens here unfortunately, but I wanted to begin establishing some of what Cloud and Prompto have been doing before bringing them together. Anways, I hope it turned out well enough, Cloud isn't difficult to write per se, but there's some things that I have to keep in mind when doing so that I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do so (if you know, then you know). 
> 
> I have an outline of this story, and I've laid down the foundations for a lot of chapters already. However, seeing as though my general direction for the story may be subject to change when I finish the remake, I have to say that I don't know how often I'll be updating this at first, but I'm aiming to change that quickly, and I can say with a decent amount of certainty that I'll be able to devote a lot of time to this soon. And no matter how long I go without updating because of life or whatever, I do solemnly promise to not leave this incomplete.
> 
> That's all for now, folks. Ya'll stay happy and healthy! Til next time.


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